


One Year

by BurntWhisper



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Adult! Alex, Angst, Gentleman's Agreement verse, M/M, Slow Burn, The Yassen and Alex on the run together fic no one asked for, the world's slowest burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27545992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurntWhisper/pseuds/BurntWhisper
Summary: A gentleman's agreement for handling business in the field was one thing. Going on the run together, trying to evade both of their employers, neither of which were prepared to let their best operative go, was quite another.ORAlex and Yassen try to out-run MI6 and Scorpia for a year, without getting killed (or killing one another).Based on Valaks' "Gentleman's Agreement".
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider, Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider
Comments: 111
Kudos: 184





	1. September I

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Gentleman’s Agreement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25422646) by [Valaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valaks/pseuds/Valaks). 



> This is intended to be a sequel to Valaks' "Gentleman's Agreement" and my own sequel to that fic, "Specific Performance". It treats Valaks' prequel "Turncoat" and TheInverseUniverse's "Twelve Hours" as GA-verse canon, but you do not need to have read any of these works in advance. Thanks to Valaks, as ever, for allowing me to play in her sandpit.
> 
> Further thanks to both victoryhonorfame and Valaks, who have put up with my moaning about this for weeks already, and have offered the most helpful feedback, encouragement and plotting help, even when I wanted to toss this fic into the English Channel.

**24 September, 12.15am, British Summer Time**

**Dover, United Kingdom**

It was raining in the port. Less rain and more drizzly mist: deceptively light until it left one drenched. The weather was being blamed for the slight delay in the last ferry of the night, but, as usual where British transport was concerned, it was nothing more than an excuse: the water was calm, and there was only a light breeze, slightly cool for September. 

The man entering the foot passenger departures area (inexplicably signposted ‘Arrivals’) had walked from Dover Priory station to the ferry terminal. The mac he was wearing was soaked, and he shrugged it off as soon as he was in the ferry terminal, revealing a dark suit that was expensively cut. The sort a businessman might wear. He went directly to the check-in desk of P&O: the British company that ran the ferry terminal.

“I have a ticket for the ferry at quarter to one,” he told the employee behind it. He spoke English with a French accent.

The employee put down the book he had been reading. “You’re very lucky, sir. We usually close check-in forty-five minutes before the scheduled departure time. But there’s been a short delay.”

“I’m aware.” The man had checked online.

“Do you have your ticket and passport?”

The man took a passport from the pocket of his coat, and handed over his mobile phone displaying his electronic ticket. He had booked his place on the ferry an hour before, as he sat on the train from London. The vast majority of passengers on board travelled by car, but it took foot passengers too, and there had been plenty of spaces available. The ferry would not have ordinarily been his first choice: any public transport one couldn’t immediately vacate if one had to was irritating and always felt like a risk. But that was the problem with Britain - the whole country was surrounded by water, cut off from the mainland. At some point one had to choose the least bad option, and on this occasion he had decided that the last Dover-Calais ferry on a Saturday morning, where security was slack because border patrol was tired and there were fewer cameras than a train station or an airport, was probably preferable.

“You’ll have to go through passport control,” the employee said, sliding the phone and passport back over the desk. “You’ll find it to the left. And then there’s a courtesy bus to the ferry outside.” He tipped his head slightly - perhaps it might have been a bow. “Have a good trip, Mr Boisson.”

Yassen Gregorovich smiled thinly, picked up the phone and fake passport, and proceeded to passport control.

* * *

  
_Tom -_

_I know you won’t see this until you get back from Italy. I’m having to go away for a while. Maybe permanently. I’ve left instructions with a solicitor to transfer the house into your name at the end of the month. You spent more time in it than I did anyway._

_Thanks for being a great best mate._

_Alex_

* * *

To: Jack Starbright <jacksback1980@gmail.com>

From: Alex Rider <ajrider@gmail.com>

Date: 24 September 2017 18:19:52

Dear Jack,

This is probably going to be the last time you’ll hear from me for a while. I can’t explain, and I’m sorry I can’t call, but I know you’ll understand. 

I hope everything’s OK in Washington. I’ll be thinking about you. I’ll try to get in contact if I can.

Love, Alexx

* * *

From: +44795125016

To: +18165922019

24-Sep-17 18:22

Hi Sab, it’s Alex (new number again). Something’s happened. I’m going to disappear. I just wanted to tell you not to worry, and that I’m really sorry I won’t be able to come to your wedding in December. It was really nice of you to invite me. 

From: +44795125016

To: +18165922019

24-Sep-17 18:24

Don’t worry if you can’t get hold of me on this number. It’s going to be disconnected. I’m OK.

* * *

**24 September, 6.25pm, British Summer Time**

**London, United Kingdom**

The Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International was, as was usual on a Sunday evening, crowded: families journeying back to the continent after a weekend away; businessmen, especially European diplomats, travelling to get back for work. There were only fifteen minutes until the last train for Brussels left, and nearly everyone had already checked in and had cleared security. Boarding had just been announced, and the sea of people who had been packed into the waiting area were now travelling in a wave towards the train. 

One passenger remained, standing just outside the security checkpoint. He had been typing on the mobile phone in his hand for a few minutes, but he had just finished and turned the phone off. The lady behind the booth at the entrance to the terminal watched, bemused, as he used a pin to extract the SIM card, threw it in the nearby bin, and pocketed the phone. Then he approached her, offering a paper train ticket tucked into a passport that told her that his name was Timothy Goldring.

“You’ll have to hurry,” she told him. “You still need to go through security.”

“I’ve got a pass…” 

The lady blinked as he handed over a laminated security pass, looking at it before glancing up at him again. She didn’t get handed these very often, and the fair-haired young man in front of her, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, looked more like a student than a government employee, especially the sort who carried a pass relieving them of the obligation to undergo security checks. But, looking at his face, it occurred to her that first appearances had been deceiving. The serious brown eyes that looked back at her looked as though they belonged to someone much older than the twenty-four years indicated on his passport. 

“The train’s boarding now,” she said, unable to keep the hesitation from her voice. Something about the young man unsettled her. She handed back the pass, together with the ticket and passport. “I wouldn’t hang around.” 

“I won’t,” the young man promised, and went on his way.

It was only when he was sitting in his seat in standard class and the train started to move out of the station that Alex Rider allowed himself to relax for the first time in twenty-four hours.

It had been a stressful day. Wrapping one’s life up in a single Sunday would be difficult for anyone. And Alex had had to do it all without giving anyone who might be interested the impression that he was about to disappear.

The deed of transfer for the house had been put in the post that afternoon, so that it wouldn’t be received by Bruce Witman Hardgrass LLP until Tuesday morning. He had packed a single backpack to avoid appearing that he was going away for any length of time, and it contained the bare minimum he thought he would need, all sentimental items left behind. A note had been left for Tom on the kitchen table; no phone calls. A meandering route from Chelsea had got Alex to St Pancras - he hoped enough to throw off any tails he might have had. He’d waited until the last possible moment to send messages to Jack and Sabina in case anyone was monitoring his texts or emails.

It wasn’t enough, of course. Scorpia wanted him dead, and all Alex had was a host of MI6-issued passports to travel on - easily traceable, and they wouldn’t get him very far. But Alex had a plan. Come 7.30am the next morning, he would be travelling from Cologne under an entirely new identity. He would disappear. So long as Yassen held up his side of the bargain.

People might have wondered if Alex was mad, putting his escape plan in the hands of a contract killer. But Alex had been doing it for the last nine years. And he wasn’t dead yet. 

Besides, this had been Yassen’s idea. Yassen - who had been sent by Scorpia to kill him and instead had decided to run. And to take Alex with him, if Alex agreed.

Unable to help it, Alex’s mind wandered back to the night before - the last time he had seen Yassen. The moment when Yassen had paused - a heavy, final sort of pause, which should have been followed by “goodbye”, but what had instead come out was: “You could meet me in Moscow.” 

It had been delivered with all the casual nonchalance that Alex expected of Yassen, of course. He doubted Yassen’s expression would have been any different if Alex had said no instead of yes. Even when Alex had agreed, Yassen had stayed for no more than twenty minutes to issue him with instructions, in that cool, business-like way he seemed to handle everything. Alex was to meet Yassen outside Komsomolskaya metro station in Moscow on 1 October, at 10 o’clock in the morning. He should travel through northern Europe - preferably through Scandinavia, entering Russia from Finland - because Yassen was going through central Europe and it would be better if they travelled separately. He should go via Cologne station where Yassen would leave him some items to pick up. After all that Yassen had made Alex write down all his bank account information for him, and disappeared into the night with it.

Thinking about it now, Alex started to wonder whether he had lost his mind after all. What was he doing, exactly, running off into the night with a Scorpia assassin?

But it was _Yassen_. 

Alex couldn’t have explained it to anyone. Sometimes he felt a little like his whole life had revolved around Yassen Gregorovich. It wasn’t just Yassen’s history with Alex’s family. Yassen’s reappearance a year after he was supposed to have died on Air Force One, in front of Alex, had prompted the start of a messy, entangled association no one could have foreseen. There were countless times Yassen should have killed him and hadn’t. Alex had covered for Yassen to allow him to escape capture by Alex’s own side. Yassen had stepped in to cover Alex’s records at school - even going so far as to arrange tutors to bring Alex up to speed with the school work he was missing (amongst other things - there was a reason Alex’s Russian was so good, and it wasn’t the patchy language classes provided by MI6). Yassen was probably a lot of the reason Alex was so good at his job now. 

In that sense, it had really only been a matter of time before they got into this sort of crisis. They were on opposite sides. Alex had spent a good portion of the last few years decimating Scorpia’s business. It was hardly surprising Scorpia had issued Yassen with an order to get rid of Alex once and for all. 

Alex wondered what MI6 were going to think. He hadn’t given them any warning he was going to disappear - it was too dangerous, and Mrs Jones was bound to try to talk him out of it. They might quite quickly work out that he was running from Scorpia - or someone, anyway. He might get lucky; they might leave him alone, come to the same conclusion that he had - that Scorpia were too well connected, and that MI6 wouldn’t be able to protect him. 

But if they somehow worked out that he’d fled with Yassen Gregorovich... 

The obvious conclusion would be that Alex had betrayed MI6, and Alex would be lucky if they stopped to ask questions rather than opting for something rather cleaner and more convenient. 

Not a pleasant thought. Alex pushed it from his mind. He’d already made his choice. It was a bit late to back out now.

The train rattled through the rapidly fading light of the English countryside, already rushing towards the Channel Tunnel on its way to the continent.

* * *

**25 September, 3am, Central European Summer Time**

**Cologne, Germany**

Yassen entered Cologne Hauptbahnhof carrying a single backpack on his shoulder and a duffle bag in one hand.

He had stayed overnight - or half the night, anyway - in a small hostel nearby. He had left at 2.30am, wandered the dark streets for enough time to be sure that he wasn’t being followed, and then walked to Cologne’s main train station.

Not that it would have been very easy to recognise him even if someone had managed to follow his convoluted route through France and Belgium the previous day. The man who entered the station was a very different one from the person who had boarded the ferry at Dover over twenty-four hours before. In place of François Boisson was a young-ish man (it was difficult to tell his precise age, but you might have hazarded a guess at early thirties) with spiky dark hair, a Rammstein t-shirt, and ripped black jeans. This man’s name was Henri Fischer and he was supposedly a PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin. His university city was where he would be travelling next, on the first train of the day, before he - or, rather, by that time, Miloš Havlík - changed course for the Czech Republic, heading further east towards Russia.

Yassen’s train was at eighteen minutes past four. It was a direct train, and would take nearly five hours. He already had his electronic ticket, on a new mobile phone he had bought the previous day. He already had some books and extra food in his backpack - which was just as well, because everything at this hour was closed inside the station, except for the internet cafe. It was the internet cafe where Yassen went immediately upon entering the station.

He spent just over an hour there, using his own laptop and the paid-for wireless. He had in front of him the piece of paper Alex had written down his bank account information on. He could have done what he needed to in the hostel, but he’d had to use his passport to check in there and there was always a chance someone might put two and two together. Better to keep it as anonymous as possible.

At five past four, Yassen crossed through the details Alex had written, wrote three numbers each 12 digits long underneath, and put it in the duffel bag. Then he closed his laptop and left the internet cafe.

There was still one more thing to deal with before he went to get his train. 

There was a series of machines in one area of the station, before one got to the platforms. They looked like a strange cross between ticket machines and mini garages. In fact they were automated lockers. Yassen would have much preferred manual ones, but they didn’t exist at Cologne train station. He inserted a five euro note into the machine and waited for the silver door to lift, before depositing the holdall he was carrying inside. As well as the piece of paper he had just been writing on, it contained three passports (one Russian, one German, one French) and matching driver’s licences; several changes of clothes Yassen had procured earlier that day; three thousand pounds in a mixture of currencies; and a semi-automatic handgun. 

The door closed, carrying the bag off to storage, and the machine spat out a card. Yassen took it and then went to the information desk.

“ _Guten Abend_ ,” he said to the man sitting behind the counter. His German was flawless; any German would have been hard-pressed to say that he wasn’t native. His tone was upbeat - every inch the cheerful student he was supposed to be. “I’ve walked off with my friend’s card for the luggage facility. I have to get on a train but can I leave it here for him to collect in a few hours’ time?”

The man behind the counter gave him a weary look. He took an envelope from a stack in front of him and placed it in front of Yassen with a pen. 

“Put it in this envelope and write his name on it.”

His tone suggested that this happened at least half a dozen times a day. Yassen did as he was told, and handed back the envelope containing the card, the name Timothy Goldring written on the front.

It occurred to Yassen, as he walked away from the desk, that his duty to Alex was done. The duffel bag - which Alex would collect in a few hours - had everything he needed to hide from both MI6 and Scorpia. If Yassen wanted to, he could disappear now, avoid Moscow altogether. His conscience would be clear.

He halted before he got to the train platforms. He had been weighing up the prospect of simply disappearing by himself ever since he had left Alex’s house in Chelsea. His suggestion that they disappear together had been spur-of-the-moment, not fully thought through; unlike him. That always seemed to happen around Alex, he thought, and immediately felt irritated with himself. For once in his life, he needed to be rational when it came to Alex Rider. 

The sensible thing would be to vanish on his own, with no loose ends. He could go to Cologne Airport now and pick up a flight to Paris or Vienna. It was true that Yassen’s plan had always been, if he ever had to hide, to go back to Russia. But he could travel somewhere else - South America perhaps. Or simply bypass Moscow: fly to St Petersburg, or Yekaterinburg. Alex would be surprised, no doubt, but he would be safe. And so would Yassen. He would be alone, but Alex Rider had been a dangerous weakness for a decade as it was. Was it really wise to protract that any further?

 _Sentimentality is the last thing you can afford. Trust me, it will get you killed._ That was what John Rider had told him, the first time that they had met.

And yet…

Still Yassen hesitated; made no move to leave the station. Something pulled him to stay. What was it about Alex that made it so difficult to walk away? he wondered.

The train to Berlin left five minutes later, at eighteen minutes past four on the dot. Yassen watched it pull out of the station from his assigned seat on board, still feeling exasperated with himself, and wondering if he would live long enough to regret not cutting loose when he had had the opportunity.

* * *

**25 September, 8.30am, British Summer Time**

**London, United Kingdom**

When twenty year-old, newly recruited Andrew Denton arrived at his desk in the administration department at the Royal and General, he expected an easy Monday morning. 

He logged into his laptop, using his fingerprints and the bit locker password he had been given the previous week during his induction. It took a while for his computer to boot up. Andrew had had the misfortune to work the weekend shift - supposedly under the guise of showing him the ropes, but he hadn’t been able to see anything different about working on a weekend to all the other days of the week - but even so he had shut the laptop down at five-thirty the previous day and it was always slow to start. He ate the pastry breakfast he had picked up at Caffe Nero while he waited for it to load the homepage, thinking glumly that working in the Special Operations division of MI6 had, so far, been a lot less thrilling than he had imagined and even the small increase in pay from the Home Office probably hadn’t been worth having to give up his weekend for. He was still chewing on his pain au chocolat when he opened his emails.

He didn’t expect anything of significance. He’d only been at work fifteen hours ago, after all. He was surprised when he found he had an unread email. But even that couldn’t enthuse him.

The Special Operations division of MI6 did not take its security lightly. Every single one of its employees was monitored to some degree or another for signs of suspicious or unexplained behaviour. One of the responsibilities of the administration and finance departments was to monitor the bank accounts of field operatives and senior management. When any payment over ten thousand pounds sterling was made - out or in - in any twenty-four period, an automated alert was generated and sent to Andrew’s team. 

It was one of those alerts that Andrew had received overnight. He’d been told they were usually dull. Indeed, he had received one of these last week, and it was only some junior field operative buying her first house. He opened this one with little interest.

And then nearly dropped his breakfast down his front. 

The alert he had received last week had shown a transfer of a single lump sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling to the bank account of a conveyancing solicitor. This was the transfer of some two point five million, made through hundreds of transactions in the early hours of that morning. And it had left each of the four accounts from which it had been transferred completely empty. 

Dazed, Andrew pulled up the spreadsheet of accounts to check to whom the accounts belonged, just as he’d been taught on his first day. 

Alexander Rider, the spreadsheet told him. Senior Field Operative. 

**_Escalate immediately_** , the notes added in bold.

Andrew had to ask his supervisor what that meant. Five minutes later he was hurrying down the corridor to the finance department, clutching the print outs they would need to trace where the money had gone. After thirty of the most exciting minutes Andrew had experienced at MI6 so far, in which at least five members of the finance department crowded around two computers whilst Andrew bobbed nervously in the background, they handed him a report to take to the Chief Executive immediately, with instructions to ask her secretary if he could interrupt any meeting she was in.

Andrew took the report and rushed out of the room, heading for the sixteenth floor.

* * *

The Chief Executive was in her office. Alone, as it turned out, because Alex Rider was late for a meeting which was supposed to have started forty-five minutes ago. And Mrs Jones was not a woman who was used to being kept waiting these days. Even by Alex Rider. 

She had waited thirty minutes after the scheduled time - which she thought was excessively indulgent, and not a leniency she would have shown anyone else - and then asked her secretary to telephone him.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the secretary said, appearing a short while later. Mrs Jones noted the flush in her cheeks. “The number we have for Agent Rider must be wrong. It’s been disconnected.” 

The number that they had for Alex Rider was almost certainly not wrong. 

“His home line?” Mrs Jones asked, a little irritated with her secretary, who had come over from MI5 and who she already had suspicions was not up to the job.

“No answer, ma’am.”

Being generous, that might have been because Alex was already on his way to Liverpool Street. Resigned to wait a little longer, Mrs Jones reached for a peppermint and put it in her mouth. She was about to dismiss her secretary when a young man hurried into the room, almost falling through the doorway in his haste. It wasn’t Alex Rider. She didn’t recognise him. He was perhaps in his late teens, with bad acne on his chin and a tie that had a chocolate stain in the middle of it. 

“Yes?” she asked testily, already feeling that this had been a trying enough Monday morning.

“Report for you, Mrs Jones - think you should see.” 

The young man puffed out his chest a little as if he’d thought of the idea himself, although Mrs Jones was at once certain that the order had come from elsewhere. She pursed her lips and held out her hand. The man handed her a thin ream of paper stapled in the corner. It was headed: _Top Secret: Finance Department._

Mrs Jones read the first line and almost choked on her peppermint.

* * *

**25 September, 1pm, British Summer Time**

**London, United Kingdom**

Four hours later, the picture was hardly any clearer. What they had managed to discover begged more questions than it answered.

Alex Rider was, so far as his wealth in Britain was concerned, penniless. All four of his bank accounts had been emptied overnight, drained systematically through seven hundred and four different transactions in varying amounts, each no more than five thousand pounds. The money had been traced initially to a number of different persons and businesses, all of them located offshore. It hadn’t remained there. Within minutes, the finance team reported, the money had been shifted out of those accounts. Some - not all - of it had been traceable to further offshore accounts in Bermuda, Belize and Singapore, but it had been wired out again a short while later. The finance team couldn’t say what had happened to it after that. Alex’s small fortune appeared to have evaporated. It had taken a mere fifteen minutes for it to disappear beyond MI6’s view.

Some digging by the IT specialists had determined that the initial money transfer seemed to have taken place using a public hotspot at Cologne train station, but that information was hardly useful given the money didn’t appear to be in Germany.

The likelihood, the finance team said, was that it had ended up in Switzerland: that was where most transactions like this tended to end up in their experience. But that was little help either since Swiss banking confidentiality laws meant that it was impossible to confirm that that was the case - much less find out in whose name the account had ended up, or what transactions they then carried out.

Meanwhile, two agents had been dispatched to Alex’s house in Chelsea. There had been no response at the door. Upon forcing entry - it seemed Alex’s housemate, Tom Harris, wasn’t home - they had found a letter left for Harris which had been photographed and sent back to Liverpool Street. That made it clear that Alex Rider had not only vanished, he’d apparently done so of his own volition. 

That left it to the surveillance department to track down where Alex might have gone. It took them three hours to discover that one of the passports issued to Alex had been used to book a Eurostar train to Brussels the night before. The surveillance tapes at St Pancras International had been procured. A fair-haired man who might have been Alex had been spotted going through passport control and boarding the 18.40 train on Sunday evening.

Mrs Jones sat with stills from the tapes in front of her. There weren’t any clear shots, and the surveillance team had only been about 60% sure that the man _was_ Alex, but, staring at the slim-built profile, Mrs Jones was utterly certain. 

“And he used one of our passes to get through security?” she asked the surveillance department manager, who sat on the other side of her desk.

“We think so. The footage makes it look like he was waved through without being searched.”

Probably armed, then: Alex would only have wanted to dodge security checks if he’d had something in his luggage he wanted to hide. That wasn’t so unusual for field operatives, even if they were going on holiday rather than being on active duty. The trouble was, Mrs Jones doubted that Alex was going for a jolly around Belgium. Not least because he had been due to be in a briefing with her that morning.

Simple desertion? she wondered. It did happen, if very occasionally: agents who decided that they had had enough, who knew they were about to be sent on something dangerous and bailed before they could be made to do it. But Alex had never baulked at anything for fear. There had only ever been one operation he had refused to do, and that had been managing the disappearance of a former agent who was threatening to write a memoir and had therefore become inconvenient. Even then, Alex hadn’t run shy. He’d sat in Mrs Jones’s office and flatly told her that he wouldn’t be used as a murder weapon. 

And this operation had been nothing like that. It looked like it was difficult - she’d already warned him of that - but that was nothing new for an operative with Alex’s experience.

Not that, then.

“Theories?” she asked, glancing at her Chief of Staff, who was standing near the door. 

John Crawley’s expression was serious. He had been as surprised as Mrs Jones had been to hear that Alex Rider had, without any warning, managed to do a disappearing act. 

“Gone to ground,” he said. “We knew Scorpia operatives already had orders to shoot him on sight. Perhaps their orders got rather more pointed.”

Scorpia paid someone to take care of him, was what he meant. Mrs Jones pursed her lips.

“We can confirm that through our intelligence sources,” Crawley added. Their “intelligence sources” was no doubt intended to refer to the agent they currently had in deep cover within Scorpia’s ranks, but the reason for his crypticness was that that information was on a strictly need-to-know basis. The surveillance team manager present certainly did not need to know.

“Let’s proceed on the basis that Alex did decide he needed to hide from Scorpia,” Mrs Jones said. “Why wouldn’t he have told us first?”

Crawley tilted his head a fraction. Mrs Jones could read that look without his having to articulate it; they had worked together for a long time. If Alex had thought he was in danger - serious danger - he wouldn’t have trusted MI6 to take care of him. But did he really think he would do better on his own? He was an excellent agent, but he had only ever operated through MI6. Special Operations had arranged every single one of his covers in the past; every single one of his passports. He no doubt had contacts, but he was still too over-reliant on the bureaucracy to be able to run for long. MI6’s surveillance team had already tracked him from Brussels to Cologne.

Moreover, did Alex really think that Mrs Jones was the sort of woman to let one of her best operatives walk away without a fight?

“Send three of our operatives to Germany,” she said. “I want Alex Rider brought in.”

  
  



	2. September II

**27 September, 10.50pm, Central European Summer Time**

**Malmö, Sweden**

FRIHET, located on Malmö’s main square, was dark, crowded, and stank of sweat and alcohol. Standing in the entrance, his ears pounding painfully in time to the music, Alex was reminded why he hated clubs so much.

But they had their uses. Especially if you had a tail to lose. 

He didn’t know if it was going to work. He hadn’t had much luck so far. He’d spent twenty-four hours trailing over Germany trying to shake the shadow he’d picked up in Hamburg, only to get to Copenhagen and find it had doubled in size. Then he’d thought he’d managed to ditch them on the bus from Denmark to Sweden. But they’d been waiting for him in Malmö, on the other side of the Øresund Bridge, and Alex had only just managed to evade being cornered.

Two men. Probably MI6, not Scorpia, because no one had tried to shoot him yet. Small mercies.

He had to shake them now. If he could do it before the last bus for Stockholm left at eleven-thirty, he’d be out of the city tonight and they’d have a job finding him again. It was probably going to be his best opportunity.

Two tails to lose. Forty minutes to do it. It was possible, if he was efficient about it.

The agents weren’t yet in the club - Alex had been ahead of them in the queue to get in. He had a slight head start. He had three minutes, maybe. Tops.

It took him two minutes of those minutes to scope out the place. The club had three floors. The ground and first floors were similar - large, open dance floors, toilets and a long bar on each, with tables around the perimeter piled high with people’s belongings. The second floor was a rooftop terrace. No music, but it was a warm evening and it was packed with people talking, drinking and smoking. The only exits were the entrance Alex had come through, and a fire escape from the roof. He briefly considered just hauling himself down the latter before the agents even got into the club, and then dismissed it. For one thing, there was a bouncer guarding it. For another, the first thing the agents would do was look for Alex in the club. If they couldn’t find him, they’d go straight to the bus and train stations. Alex would never get out of Malmö without being seen.

No; he had to hold them here long enough for him to get on the bus without them. 

Really, he needed to split them up. Unless he wanted to take his chances in an uneven fight, that was his only option.

 _Not your only option,_ an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Yassen’s reminded him. 

Alex knew what Yassen would do.

He wasn’t Yassen.

The agents entered the club a minute later. Alex watched them from the stairs. The second he was sure he’d been spotted, he disappeared up them, taking the sticky steps two at a time.

It didn’t take the agents long to follow him. But by the time they reached the first floor, Alex had disappeared. They looked around, exchanged a few words, and then one of them disappeared up the stairs to the terrace, exactly as Alex had guessed he would. The other started to make his way through the crowd of dancers.

It only took him a few seconds to spot Alex. But, then, Alex was making no attempt to hide. He had chosen his position deliberately - right by the men’s toilets; impossible for the two agents to have spotted him by the stairs, but obvious to anyone on the dance floor. As soon as he knew the agent had clocked him, he disappeared into the men’s restrooms.

They were empty - but Alex had already known that. He let the door swing shut behind him, and turned around at once, already shifting his weight to the balls of his feet in preparation.

The door opened again. Alex saw a flash of dark hair and the leather jacket he’d anticipated. A surprised expression - the agent hadn’t expected Alex to be there. He reacted quickly, bringing his hands up in a defensive stance.

Alex was faster. 

Like lightning, his hand struck out, delivering a savage uppercut to the agent’s jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He crumpled. 

Alex didn’t waste any time. Throwing the man’s head back had pinched the nerves at the top of his spinal column and made him temporarily black out, but it wouldn’t last. Panting slightly with effort, Alex hauled the heavier agent up and heaved him into a cubicle, dumping the man onto the toilet seat and locking the door behind them. 

He used duct tape from his bag to secure the agent’s hands and feet. Alex had brought the duct tape from London, and it was a good thing his bag hadn’t been searched when he’d entered the club, because the duct tape was probably the least offensive thing in it. The agent was still slumped over, but Alex put a strip of tape over the man’s mouth anyway. Then he put his bag back on and, leaving the door locked, hauled himself over the top of the cubicle.

A man was coming into the toilets as Alex jumped down. He looked unsteady as he blinked at Alex - obviously already drunk. Not lucid enough to put two and two together. Alex pushed past him and back out into the club.

One agent down. One to go. 

The next one was going to be trickier. No toilets on the terrace. There was also the bouncer Alex had spotted guarding the fire escape, which made things difficult too. Bouncers tended to look dimly on fights, and Alex didn’t want to be the one detained.

There were weapons in his bag, including a small grenade, that might help him get away in any resulting confusion, but he dismissed using them at once. It was all too crowded - people would get hurt. What, then?

His gaze landed on a couple standing close by. There was a young woman - probably a year or two younger than Alex - in a tiny black dress, holding a sparkly silver bag under her arm, talking to a man that looked as though he was only half-paying attention, his gaze aggressively surveying the other men close by.

It gave Alex an idea.

He moved through the dancefloor, already shrugging off his backpack again and trying not to grimace as he squeezed between the crowds. Tom had tried to take him clubbing a few times, but being surrounded by lots of people, most of whom he couldn’t keep an eye on, _all_ of whom were far too near to him for his liking, wasn’t Alex’s idea of a good time. Nor was drinking heavily, at least in public. It made people too careless.

The pile of abandoned belongings being a case in point, Alex thought as he stopped next to them.

Another minute later and Alex was climbing the stairs up to the terrace. He’d ditched his own jacket for a blazer, and swiped a trilby that had been lying on a chair. He still had his backpack, which wasn’t ideal, but it couldn’t be helped. Hopefully he looked different enough not to immediately catch the remaining agent’s attention.

The rooftop was still heaving. Alex moved his way cautiously through the crowd, on high alert. He felt more exposed than ever. He only needed the other agent to get close enough to stab him with a syringe, and he’d be down in a matter of seconds. Someone collapsing in the middle of a club - no one would bat an eyelid. The agent could laugh it off as he dragged his “drunk friend” away.

No sign of the agent. Alex halted next to a woman who had a man’s arm draped across her shoulders, surveying the bar. Where _was_ he? 

Clicking his tongue in frustration, Alex turned.

And came face to face with the agent he’d been looking for.

They were a foot apart. The MI6 operative looked as shocked as Alex felt - clearly, Alex’s half-hearted attempt at disguising himself had worked.

Alex recovered first. Before the agent could do anything, Alex snatched the bag of the woman behind him, snapping the flimsy chain it was attached to, and threw it in the direction of the agent. The latter caught it out of sheer instinct. 

Alex was already ducking away. Behind him, he heard a shout, and then a scuffle. Squeezing between the people turning around to have a look, he chanced a look over his shoulder. 

The man that had had his arm draped around the shoulders of the bag owner had just thrown a punch at the MI6 agent. The agent blocked it, already raising his hands and trying to reason with the man. His gaze shot in Alex’s direction. 

“He’s got a gun!” Alex said loudly.

It didn’t matter he’d said it in English. The effect was instantaneous. People panicked at once, starting to shove one another to get away from the two men at the bar. Alex backed out towards the edge of the terrace, turned around and nearly crashed into the bouncer moving towards the fight.

“Who?” he demanded of Alex.

“The guy in the blue jacket - ”

The bouncer was off at once, charging towards the bar. Alex watched him go. It was the contents of his own backpack that had partly given him the idea. The agent was almost certainly armed. And Malmö had recently started to gain a culture for violence; tough measures had been brought in earlier in the year to curb the use of guns in the city. The agent would likely be arrested and spend the night in a Swedish jail cell.

That suited Alex fine.

The panic seemed to have pushed most people towards the stairs. Alex went the opposite way - to the fire escape, now abandoned by the bouncer. 

Everyone’s attention now on the gun scare, no one noticed Alex as he jumped over the gate onto the metal stairs and began to jog down them, escaping into the night.

* * *

**28 September, 10am, Eastern European Summer Time**

**Kyrenia, Cyprus**

The Deathstalker Hotel, despite its somewhat sensational name, was not a particularly distinguished establishment. Its self-description as three-stars was over-generous, and it ranked bottom of all of the hotels in the tourism capital of Northern Cyprus. In fact, its guest reviews were so poor that it had become something of a joking “must stay” for gap-year students visiting Cyprus, which was, perversely, why the hotel continued to do so well despite the stained sheets, cracked bathtubs and persistent insect infestations.

The whole hotel was a front, anyway. Two levels below the hotel (accessible only via an external lift operated by a keycard and fingerprint sensor) was the building’s real purpose: an underground conference room. A more different environment could not have been imagined. The hotel lobby might have been cramped, with cockroaches running across the grubby tiled floors, but the conference room underneath was large and clean, with air conditioning and a square marble table in the middle, big enough to seat twelve.

This was one of the meeting places for the executive board of the organisation known as Scorpia.

The size of the table was because there had originally been twelve board members. A decade ago, it had been down to six. There were now ten, and that had been more or less consistent for the last eight years. 

Nine of them sat around the table now. Of the original board, only five remained: Brendan Chase, ex-ASIS; Jean Duval, the Frenchman from Interpol; Hideo Mikato, the half-African, half-Japanese man with a diamond in his front tooth; Dr Three, the elderly Chinese torture specialist; and Zeljan Kurst, the ex-police chief from Yugoslavia, only recently escaped from incarceration by the American Secret Service. The next longest-serving members had been recruited ten years before: an Irishman, Seamus Lynch, who had once been with the IRA; together with an ex-CIA operative, known only as Agent Rush, and Sabastião Cordeiro Zanetti, who had been a sniper with the precursor to the Brazilian Intelligence Agency before it had been disbanded.

That left the two women on the board. 

One of them was already present: Arafaa Virk. A ruthlessly efficient Pakistani businesswoman, she had been an assassin with another terrorist organisation and had been about to take over, having killed all her potential rivals, before Scorpia had made her an offer and she had agreed to merge with Scorpia instead. She had been a key part of stabilising and expanding Scopia’s business again nine years before, after it had nearly collapsed into oblivion.

The other board member they were still waiting for. 

It was three minutes past ten when the glass doors to the room slid open and Yasmin Sleiman walked in. As usual, she was impeccably put together, dressed in a smart trouser suit and a white hijab. There was something about her dark eyes - or maybe it was the glasses she wore - that gave the impression she was extremely intelligent, and, indeed, she was, having won a scholarship at the age of sixteen to Oxford University. After a PhD, she had been recruited by the General Intelligence Presidency, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency. The male members of her family had objected, of course. Her response had been to kill every single one of them. She had been killing ever since.

“Apologies for my lateness,” she said. “But you’ll be pleased to know that I have news.”

She walked over and took a place at the table next to Duval. Despite the twenty-five year age difference between them, Sleiman and Duval got on well, Sleiman having grown up in France.

“Gregorovich is in Eastern Europe,” she said. “He entered Ukraine last night on a bus from Slovakia. We have put out an alert to our operatives in the country and offered payment of eight million US dollars to the successful one.”

Silence greeted her words. No one was happy about what had happened with Yassen Gregorovich. He had been one of Scorpia’s very best, with the organisation for twenty-five years. But a test had been devised and Gregorovich had failed. People did not fail Scorpia. Not those who wanted to live, anyway. And then he’d disappeared.

“A sniper bullet’s too good for Gregorovich.” Mikato was the first to say what they were all thinking. 

Sleiman raised an eyebrow. One had the impression she had expected this. “Eight million dollars to the person who delivers him to the board _alive_.”

A few smiles around the table. No one there was foolish enough to trust anyone else on the board, but Sleiman was, at least, well respected; she was adept at judging the board’s mood, which was part of the reason she had been asked to oversee this matter.

“So we can kill him ourselves?” Chase asked.

“I rather thought we might let our good doctor have a few weeks with him first. To break him, as it were.” Sleiman glanced at the small, elderly man sitting on the left. He was the oldest member of the board. If he had still worked in the medical profession no doubt he would have retired by now. As it was, no one had yet successfully retired from Scorpia. Anyway, he enjoyed his work too much. 

“Gregorovich doesn’t seem like the breakable type,” the Irishman next to him muttered.

Dr Three turned to him, a bland smile on his face. He might have been a kindly school teacher, about to tell a student they’d failed an exam.

“Everyone breaks in the end,” he said. “I should be quite delighted to spend a few weeks with Gregorovich. I daresay it might allow me to try a few things I have been wanting to experiment with.”

“The business with Gregorovich is embarrassing for the organisation,” said Sleiman. “It would be wise for us to send the clearest possible warning to our other operatives of what happens if you betray the board.”

There were a few nods at this. Scorpia was a business, but it was also a terrorist organisation that had not got to where it was without punishing betrayal swiftly and decisively.

“Ukraine,” Chase said. “So he is heading towards Russia. As we thought he would.”

“It’s an easy place to hide.” Duval: pragmatic as usual.

“It certainly becomes more difficult for us if Gregorovich crosses the border into Russia,” said Sleiman. “We have a number of operatives in the main cities that we can call upon. But if he avoids those, he will be near impossible to trace.”

Silence again. No one around the table was likely to underestimate Gregorovich. There were, after all, not very many people who survived in the field for twenty-five years and still remained one of the best at the end of it. They needed to capture him in Ukraine, or risk losing sight of him altogether.

“What about Alex Rider?” 

It was Kurst who raised the other part of the issue Sleiman had been tasked with overseeing, and the question was spat out as if it was something poisonous. It surprised no one present that this was the aspect in which Kurst was most interested. No one around the table liked Rider, but Kurst possessed a singular hatred for the MI6 agent - perhaps not surprisingly, since it was because of Alex Rider that Kurst had spent over eight years at the hands of the CIA. It was Kurst who had given Yassen Gregorovich the order to kill Alex Rider and he had taken savage delight in doing so. 

“Also in Europe. According to leaks from MI6, he has travelled to Stockholm and will go next to Finland. They still have an agent tailing him.”

“To take him in, no doubt,” said Kurst. “I assume we have already sent out orders to our own operatives to take care of the position properly.” His tone was cold; uncompromising. Truth be told, he would have preferred to have been given control of this matter himself, and everyone around the table knew it.

Sleiman knew it too. She held Kurst’s stare for a moment before she glanced at Virk. It was evident that she knew Virk had something to say about the matter; possibly the two women had discussed it in advance. Virk was rougher around the edges than Sleiman, but - perhaps because of how she had come to the board - always prioritised profit over everything else. Even personal vendettas.

“The purpose of getting rid of Rider,” Virk said, “was to stop him interfering in Scorpia matters. If he’s taken himself out of the field, we should think about whether it’s really necessary for us to waste resources going after him.”

The response that greeted her words was mixed. Duval and Sleiman looked indifferent, as did Dr Three. The rest of the board wore varying degrees of distaste in their expressions. It wasn’t just that Alex Rider had cost Scorpia a great deal of money and pride over the past decade. Many of them had personal axes to grind. Lynch, Rush and Zanetti, for example, who had joined the board shortly before the incident with the Eglin Marbles, had never quite forgiven Rider for nearly taking down the whole organisation a mere six months after their promotion. Chase had been largely ambivalent - even wondering if they might recruit Rider themselves - until the agent had put a large hole through a human trafficking operation he had been overseeing three years ago, costing him two hundred and fifty million pounds personally. Mikato had nearly been killed after a yacht he had been on had been blown up by Rider the previous year. 

Then there was Kurst. His expression was uglier than ever.

“Alex Rider deserves to be shot,” he said. “And his head sent to MI6 in a basket.” His tone suggested he would like to be personally responsible for both.

Mikato grinned at this. “We could send different pieces of him to our rivals,” he suggested. “Carve him up into gifts.”

“It would send a message,” Lynch said. “That Scorpia’s finally got the better of Alex Rider.”

Sleiman was unfazed by the gruesomeness of the proposal. She had, after all, chopped her own father into little bits. And he had still been alive when she started.

“I have no objections,” she said. “If that is what the board wants. Perhaps a vote?”

It was unanimous, of course. Alex Rider had no friends on the Scorpia board. And there was no doubt that a public statement that Scorpia had finally conquered the thorn in its side would be good for business. Just as punishing Gregorovich properly would discipline the rest of the organisation.

After all, Scorpia never forgot. It certainly never forgave. That was the image it liked to project to the world, and this time would be no different.

* * *

**28 September, 1pm, Moscow Standard Time**

**Kiev, Ukraine**

It had been a mistake to come to Kiev. 

Yassen had known it the second he had stepped out of the main train station, and had felt that prickling feeling at the back of his neck he always did when he was being watched. It had taken him some time to pinpoint its source, but at last he had spotted it.

Lucian Milcau. Yassen knew him - a Scorpia operative around Yassen’s age. A former soldier in the Romanian army. He had been with Scorpia for over a decade.

Scorpia knew where Yassen was. And from the way Milcau had been waiting for him, they had known he was coming.

Yassen would have to deal with that issue later. Milcau was the more immediate problem.

Yassen knew Kiev. He had been here twice before. He had kept moving so far, sticking to crowded places. He was currently close to the west side of the river, near St Michael’s Monastery, with its golden domes that were an ever-popular photograph for visitors to Ukraine. It was the sort of place Yassen might be able to slip out of sight; gain the advantage. But as he arrived, he saw two very large tour groups about to go in. That caused problems. People were necessary for cover. Too many would get in the way.

Yassen changed course, heading instead for the main part of Sofiyivska Square. 

Directly in front of him sat the green, gold and white Saint Sophia’s Cathedral. Another popular tourist spot. Yassen had visited it the last time he had been in Kiev - he rarely had the time for such indulgences, but a tourist meander around the city had been necessary to establish his cover. Originally built in the eleventh century, it had been confiscated from the church altogether in the 1930s and it still remained in the hands of the state, now more museum than place of religious worship.

Not that it would have particularly bothered Yassen if it hadn’t been.

He buried himself in a small English tour group going into the cathedral. The tour guide - not very good at counting, as it transpired - waved the tickets at the man in the lobby. Yassen slipped away almost immediately afterwards, walking into the main section of the cathedral, as if, like everyone else, he was most interested in the grand, detailed altar. 

He diverted left before he reached it, heading for a small stone archway to the steps leading upwards to the mezzanine above. He strode up the steps, slipping past a family of four and an elderly couple slowly climbing their way up.

Most people pressed right at the top, towards the parapet over which they could look directly at the altar in front of them. Yassen went left, walking parallel with the balustrade, already hooking his backpack off his shoulder. 

He didn’t have long. Half a minute, perhaps.

He reached the third archway along, perpendicular to the altar instead of in front of it. He had unzipped his backpack, and he crouched down, his hand inside the bag. His right hand closed over a 9mm pistol, the other loading it out of sight.

He saw Milcau, staying in the middle of the cathedral down below. Likely he was trying to get a panoramic survey of the space, to find out where Yassen had disappeared to. But it would be difficult to see Yassen between the columns of the balustrade.

Yassen pulled out the gun. His hand was steady as he took aim. There was a sound like a sudden, loud exhalation of air.

The bullet hit Milcau in the back of the head. 

By the time he had fallen to the floor, Yassen had already zipped up the backpack again and was on the move.

No one had seen what had happened; between Yassen, the balustrade and the backpack, the gun had been virtually invisible. The pistol had a top-of-the-range silencer attached, which covered most of the noise. It had been audible, but not distinguishable enough for anyone to identify it as a gunshot. Yassen’s deliberate shot into his hairline rather than somewhere more obvious would also buy precious extra time to escape.

By the time anyone worked out what had happened, where all the blood was coming from and why, Yassen would be long gone.

He walked three streets away before he got on the first bus that arrived. It was heading to the airport, but he would get off before then; change to one heading out to the suburbs. Obviously, he needed to get out of Kiev. But leaving via any of the obvious routes, especially through the main airport or the bus or train station, would be asking for trouble. He needed to go cross-country from now on.

Cross-country to _where,_ exactly, was another problem altogether. 

The fact that Scorpia had found him in Kiev was concerning. It suggested that they had expected him to be in Eastern Europe - expected him to be making his way towards Russia. If so, there was a good chance that Moscow would be crawling with Scorpia operatives by the time Yassen arrived. 

Dangerous. _Too_ dangerous _._ So what should he do? 

The answer was obvious: avoid Moscow, the way he had contemplated back in Cologne. That was the sensible thing to do. The pragmatic, _safe_ thing to do.

And, yet, that nagging feeling again. _Alex_ was on his way to Moscow. And he was in as much danger from Scorpia as Yassen was.

For the first time, Yassen regretted not having given himself a way of contacting Alex when he’d had the opportunity in Cologne. He hadn’t wanted to: it had seemed like too great a temptation. Yassen no longer trusted himself when it came to Alex; he knew that if he had decided to cut and run after all, there was a good chance he would have ended up calling Alex to tell him so if the option had been open to him. Which would have undermined the point of running in the first place. Alex was skilled enough to trace any call from Yassen, even if it lasted seconds. 

But the mere fact Yassen couldn’t call Alex to warn him didn’t mean that Yassen should go to Moscow. Not if he wanted to live.

_Stop being indecisive. No hesitation._

Yassen looked out of the window, watching Kiev go past, and made up his mind. 

The truth was, there were no good options anymore. Yassen had to choose one and hold to it. And hope that both he and Alex survived.

That was, he acknowledged warily, assuming that Alex wasn’t already dead.

* * *

**30 September, 8am, British Summer Time**

**London, United Kingdom**

Mrs Jones sat in silence for a full minute after John Crawley had finished the summary of his report. Then she stood up, turning her back on him to look out of the window. Below, Liverpool Street was quiet. It was a Saturday morning. Mrs Jones would ordinarily have been at home, but she had been telephoned an hour ago by her Chief of Staff and had come straight in.

She could feel another headache coming on. This week had not gone at all as she had envisaged. She had sent three of her operatives after Alex Rider to bring him in alive, preferably unharmed. She had thought it was a simple request. As it was, two of them had lost him in Malmö: one found incapacitated in a nightclub toilet at 7am on Thursday morning; and the other retrieved from jail by Crawley after a protracted discussion with the Swedish authorities. The third...

“The Gulf of Bothnia,” she said at last, turning around again. “He pushed our agent into the Gulf of Bothnia.”

“They were on the ferry crossing between Sweden and Finland.” Crawley looked faintly embarrassed. “It seems that Rider did raise the alarm that someone had gone overboard, so she was fished out again quite quickly. No serious harm done; touch of hypothermia. But of course the medical teams took over, and…”

“She couldn’t follow him off the ship,” Mrs Jones finished. 

“Quite.” Crawley paused. “He disembarked on foot. But that was odd in itself, because he’d driven onto the ferry in a hired car.”

“He abandoned it.”

“Yes, and when it was found it had someone locked in it.”

“Who?”

“That’s unclear. We haven’t managed to get much from the Finnish authorities, but he certainly isn’t one of ours or theirs. We know that they found a gun in the boot of the car that matched the man’s fingerprints.”

Mrs Jones pursed her lips. “Scorpia.” It wasn’t a question.

“Our agent suspected there was someone else tailing Rider from Stockholm but didn’t get a view on them. This was probably it.” 

Mrs Jones pursed her lips. “They didn’t try to get a shot in?”

“Rider never gave them the opportunity. Same reason our agent couldn’t bring him in.”

The admiration in Crawley’s tone might have been suppressed, but it was still there. Mrs Jones gave him a long look before she turned to look out of the window again.

“This business in Kiev,” she said. Crawley’s report had covered that, too. Yassen Gregorovich. A name that seemed to have plagued her for the last decade. “Kiev isn’t near Finland,” she said.

“No.” 

Despite his agreement, Crawley’s tone betrayed the same hesitant unease Mrs Jones was feeling. They were both trained to spot patterns. Both Alex and Gregorovich had started in Britain, and were nowhere near one another now. But if Alex was travelling through northern Europe and Gregorovich was in Ukraine, they were both travelling in the same direction. East. Towards Russia.

Coincidence, perhaps. But only if one ignored everything else. The tremendous efficiency with which Alex had disappeared - the new identities MI6 couldn’t trace, and the money that had seemingly evaporated. The odd record between Alex and Gregorovich in the field, which Mrs Jones had never pressed, but wondered now whether she should have done.

“If Alex meets Yassen Gregorovich in Russia,” she said at last, “the chances of us ever finding them will become vanishingly small.”

Russia was too large. The bureaucracy too unwieldy. And Gregorovich no doubt knew Russia well, having grown up there. It would be easy for him to disappear, Alex Rider in tow.

“Yes,” Crawley agreed. He hesitated, and then: “It seems overwhelmingly likely that Rider intends to enter Russia from Finland. We may be able to use that knowledge in our favour.”

Mrs Jones considered. That knowledge didn’t make things much easier. Finland had been standoffish ever since the UK Brexit vote the previous year. Any request for help at the Finland/Russian border would likely be met with indifference and a cold reminder that Finland’s border with Russia was an EU issue, and thus (surely) none of the UK’s concern. 

It wasn’t even worth considering Russian cooperation. They always wanted something in return, and it was never worth it.

A tactical approach, then. One last-ditch effort to intercept Alex Rider before they lost him, potentially for good. 

“Surveillance teams at the major stopping points,” Mrs Jones said. “St Petersburg and Moscow, and the checkpoints on the Russian side where possible. Helsinki too. For the next seventy-two hours.”

“You still want Rider brought in alive?” 

Crawley’s tone was carefully neutral. Mrs Jones didn’t turn around. It was hardly an unfair question. If Alex had thrown his lot in with Yassen Gregorovich, the likelihood was that he was a traitor. Security protocol dictated that he ought to be disposed of. 

Except that, frustratingly, Alex Rider _was_ still one of Mrs Jones’s best agents. Not to mention the fact that there were a lot of outstanding questions to which Mrs Jones wanted the answers. Like what had prompted him to go off with Gregorovich in the first place.

“Alive,” she said. She turned. “But if anyone sees Gregorovich, the order is to shoot on sight.” She did not, after all, owe Gregorovich anything.

Crawley shifted his weight. “If Scorpia catch up with them before we do…”

If Scorpia found Alex Rider first, he was dead. There was no question about that. It would certainly be better for him if MI6 caught up with him first. But Mrs Jones’s job wasn’t to protect agents that had gone rogue of their own accord.

“Rider didn’t trust MI6 to protect him in the first place,” she said. If her tone had been cool before, it was now positively icy. “If Scorpia happens to shoot him dead, then at least we can be satisfied that our security problem will have just resolved itself.”

* * *

**30 September, 11.45pm, Moscow Standard Time**

**100 miles north of St Petersburg, Russia**

Alex was finally in Russia. And he was exhausted.

The train he was on, travelling between Helsinki and St Petersburg, had just crossed the border. It was running late - ironic for a service that called itself _Allegro_. Alex should have arrived in St Petersburg at half-past eleven. But the delay at Vainikkala, just short of Russia, had put him on edge. 

He was worried that he had got sloppy in Helsinki. The strain of having to constantly check and re-check his back was getting to him. Not that it was the first time he’d been on the run - he’d had to flee enough countries whilst dodging enemies and unfriendly governments, thanks - but he’d never had to do it for a sustained period, by himself, without any backup. MI6 was usually on hand to help, these days - at least since he became a fully-fledged agent. This - being on his own, on the run - was something else. Nowhere felt safe: it felt like he had to be on the move constantly if he wanted to stay ahead of MI6 and Scorpia. They’d known he’d gone to Finland. Had they guessed he’d travelled to Helsinki?

He’d had an uneasy feeling at Helsinki station, but he hadn’t been able to work out why. Now he was worried that the train’s delay was something to do with him. 

But his passport and papers had already been checked by Finnish border police on board the train; they had disembarked at Vainikkala without incident. And now he was in Russia. Guards would board at Vyborg, the next station, and check passports going down to St Petersburg, but he should already feel better, being out of the EU and further away from MI6’s prying eyes.

So why didn’t he?

Fatigue, probably. Alex had barely slept in a week, too anxious to let his guard down. Even now he was making sure he kept himself awake. It was too risky to do anything else. There were no private carriages on the train: it was all open space, communal tables, and Alex felt too vulnerable, even though the carriage he was sat in at the top of the train was nearly empty and no one but the Finnish police had entered it for hours.

No one suspicious, anyway. Alex watched as an elderly man with long-ish grey hair and a salt-and-pepper pepper wandered unsteadily down the aisle, and wondered if he wasn’t just being stupid and paranoid. He had to be on an early train to Moscow in the morning. Perhaps he ought to get some sleep while he could.

Then the man sat down in the seat opposite Alex.

There were at least a dozen spare tables in the carriage. Alex was at once alert. 

“Hello, Sasha,” the man said in Russian.

Sasha Ivanov was the name in Alex’s passport. Only the Finnish border patrol had seen it and they had already disembarked. But it wasn’t that that had given Alex the clue. It was the voice - cool, calm, unruffled. Much younger than the person who had just sat down.

Somehow, impossibly, Yassen Gregorovich was sitting in front of him.

The frail gentleman opposite him couldn’t have looked less like Yassen. But Alex supposed that was the point.

“Father,” he returned. For that, he got a twitch of Yassen’s grey eyebrows. The only other people in the carriage were sitting down the other end, and if they spoke quietly they probably couldn’t be overheard. But even so, it never hurt to establish a cover. “This is a surprise. I thought you’d got the earlier train.” His way of saying - _what are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?_

“You think I can’t track down my own son?”

There was a slight inflection on _track down_ that Alex got at once. He wanted to groan out loud. A tracker. Of course Yassen wouldn’t have let Alex wander off without a way for him to find him again. He’d complained often when Alex had been a teenager that he was a trouble magnet and couldn’t be trusted to follow instructions; evidently, nothing had changed. It must have been hidden on something Yassen had left for Alex in Cologne. Alex hadn’t checked. It wasn’t like it mattered if Yassen knew where to find him.

He opened his mouth again, but it was Yassen who spoke first, suddenly leaning forward, his voice low, switching to French instead.

“It’s too dangerous to meet in Moscow,” he said. “One of Scorpia’s agents was in Kiev. Moscow will be covered with their operatives. I hoped to intercept you in Finland, but your own problems made that difficult.”

So Alex had been right about Helsinki. He noted that Yassen looked unimpressed. Evidently, he thought Alex should have been paying rather more attention. He was right.

“MI6 or Scorpia?” Alex asked.

“Both. I do not think MI6 followed you onto the train, though I can’t be sure. Unfortunately, your employer plainly suspects you are travelling into Russia. There are agents waiting at St Petersburg. Some at Vyborg too. If you are spotted disembarking, they will no doubt try to take you into custody.”

 _Right._ “And Scorpia?”

“There was a Scorpia operative on board the train. I’ve taken care of it.” Yassen’s voice was steady. “Although, obviously, if he has told anyone that he followed you, there is a good chance Scorpia will also be waiting for you as soon as you get off this train.”

 _This gets better and better._ “So I’m trapped, is what you’re saying.” Alex supposed he ought to be grateful that Yassen had at least come to warn him.

Yassen’s eyebrows drifted upwards again. He could be difficult to read, but on this occasion Alex got the gist.

_A little faith, please._

They were trapped on a train. Surrounded on all sides by MI6 and Scorpia agents, one or both of whom wanted them dead. Yassen had taken a big risk to come. But of course he wouldn’t have done it unless he thought he could get them out. He had a plan. 

In spite of himself, Alex felt his lips twitch. 

“Stop enjoying yourself,” Yassen told him coolly. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the response to the first chapter - it really brightened my week. I am currently aiming for weekly updates, but they might slow down a little because I have a job which can be quite unpredictable. Apologies for the lengthy chapter, but I thought if it took us 3 chapters to cover one week, we'd never make it through the year...!
> 
> As always, thanks to Valak and victoryhonorfame for all their help and input into this chapter; bag snatching in a club was Valak's idea and I am much indebted to her for it. Thanks too to pongnosis and her help and knowledge on the members of the Scorpia board!


	3. October I

**1 October, 12.05am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Vyborg, Russia**

The train began to slow for its roll into the first Russian stopping point fifteen minutes later.

Of those fifteen minutes, three had been used by Yassen to explain his plan, which was precisely the same length of time it had taken for Alex’s amusement to be sucked completely dry. A further eight minutes of one-sided arguments conducted in furious whispers, four minutes of silence, and they were nearly at Vyborg and Alex had run out of time to do anything about it.

He sat tense and quiet, his fingers tapping on the table, trying to reconcile himself with what they were about to do. 

Not for the first time, his gaze drifted to Yassen, who, at last, caught his eye. His grey-blue gaze conveyed a warning he didn’t need to voice aloud for Alex to get the point. 

_Relax._

Alex gritted his teeth and withdrew his hand from the table, suddenly feeling like a teenager again. But in his defence, he thought, he wasn’t usually trying to evade his own side, with the help of a Scorpia operative wanted in at least thirty countries.

His stomach lurched again.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let _Yassen_ do this.

He opened his mouth.

“There is only one exit out of Vyborg station,” Yassen said before he could speak. He was still speaking in French, his voice lowered anyway so that it couldn’t be overheard by the few other people in the carriage. “You will be recognised as soon as you step foot out of it. I am well disguised; you are not. There is no benefit in discussing this further. You have your instructions.”

“Stay in the station and keep my head down, you mean?” Alex bit out. “While you walk outside and murder everyone in sight?”

OK: maybe that had been a bit dramatic, even for him. The hardness in Yassen’s expression suggested that he thought so too.

A beat of silence.

“These are my colleagues,” Alex tried again. “People I work with.”

“They _were_ your colleagues,” Yassen corrected.

Yassen’s words relayed a truth Alex couldn’t deny. It wasn’t Alex and MI6 versus Britain’s enemies anymore. It was Alex and Yassen against the rest of the world. Which included MI6. Alex had known that was how it would be the second he’d agreed to come.

He just hadn’t expected people to die over it. 

Another twist of his gut.

“Yassen,” he said quietly. A final plea. Yassen’s gaze flickered to his again. For a brief second it looked more human - something warmer than an iceberg - before it was gone.

“If they are not a threat, I will have no need to take care of them,” he said. 

_Take care of them_. That was - maybe, possibly - better than “eliminating them”, which was how Yassen had described it the first time around. But it was still no promise.

But there was no more time for further negotiations. The train was easing into Vyborg station. Yassen gave Alex a last glance.

“ _Keep your head down_ ,” he said, and then stood up, moving towards the train doors in a quick, agile manner that belied his aged appearance, though Alex didn’t doubt that as soon as he stepped onto the platform his movements would convey every inch the elderly man he was supposed to be. Yassen was right, of course: he was well disguised. If Alex followed him outside, he was quite liable to blow Yassen’s cover and get them both killed. And Alex doubted Yassen would go down without a fight. There was a good chance they’d end up in exactly the same place - with people dead because of Alex’s choice - only they’d both be dead too so it would have all been for nothing.

The train ground to a halt and the doors opened. Alex watched Yassen disembark before he picked up his bag and followed. 

The cool air hit him as soon as he stepped onto the platform. Yassen was already moving towards the station building, where every passenger off the train from Finland had to clear passport control. Alex forced himself not to watch, not to follow, instead fumbling in his pocket under the pretense of looking for his passport. 

He reminded himself that there was one, small consolation - one possible ray of hope. Having been through the station that afternoon, Yassen had already seen some of the danger and pre-emptively attempted to deal with it. Not by killing anyone - at least, not that he’d told Alex - but the Russian police had received an anonymous tip off that Vyborg station car park was teeming with British intelligence agents. The Russians never took kindly to any interference by foreign intelligence services. There was a good chance that any MI6 agents had already been swept away. 

Hopefully. 

_Don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do._

Alex’s stomach was churning again as he extracted Sasha Ivanov’s passport from the pocket of his jeans. Most of the passengers from the train were already in the passport queue. Time for Alex to move before his lingering started to look suspicious. 

He’d only taken two steps when a shiver ran down his spine.

Some might have called it a sixth sense. Alex knew better. Something had alerted his senses - something his brain hadn’t quite managed to catch up with yet. It could be anything. A second glance. Someone moving too slowly. The wrong clothes; a familiar face; a suspicious movement. They all led, inevitably, to the same conclusion.

 _Danger._ Alex was being watched. 

His pace didn’t falter. He didn’t look around. The first rule of being watched was not to let anyone know you’d cottoned on. Instead, he gave all the people in the passport queue the briefest of once overs when he joined it. And then he spotted it: what had caught his attention.

A woman. Wearing glasses. The same shape and style Alex had been given on one of _his_ recent missions. A radio - allowing discrete inter-team communications. R&G on the arm, near the lenses, because the tech development team at Special Operations could never resist a joke. 

There was nowhere for Alex to escape. The train he’d just got off was already moving out of the platform. He had nowhere to go but through passport control. And there was a good chance the woman would be waiting on the other side. 

She probably wouldn’t try anything in the station. But she would be able to keep an eye on him. She could let the rest of her team know where he was. And she would follow him when he left the station and met Yassen.

Alex was going to have to find a way to get rid of her. Or distract her long enough for him to slip away. 

Without getting himself arrested by jumpy Russian police officers.

_Easy, then._

_Keep your head down_ , Yassen had told him. It was a good job he hadn’t extracted any promises on that front. 

* * *

**1 October, 12.15am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Vyborg, Russia**

In all truthfulness, Yassen wasn’t fully enamoured with his plan either, but there were rather limited options.

St Petersburg - the alternative to Vyborg - would be fraught with danger. There were more exits from St Petersburg station, it was true, but it was the obvious choice, and they would be ambushed by a much larger contingent of both MI6 and Scorpia operatives as a result. Moreover, they would have to escape using public transport or on foot: there was no railway car park at St Petersburg station. Vyborg, with the car park directly in front of the station, was the better option. It was a small town, too - easy to get out of quickly. And there was at least a chance that Scorpia did not have it covered, even if MI6 did.

The main problem with Vyborg was the singular entrance and exit point. Too easy to see anyone leaving the station.

Helsinki would have been much better. If Yassen could have intercepted Alex there, they could have laid low for a week or more before travelling down to Vyborg. But Yassen had had too much ground to cover, too much to arrange; he’d nearly missed Alex’s train as it was. So here they were. 

Yassen stepped out of the train station, pausing at the top of the steps and pretending to fumble with a pair of gloves while he surveyed the car park from under lowered eyelashes.

What he saw gave him mixed feelings. 

With no high windows or other buildings nearby, the main source of danger was the car park. That was, in a way, a blessing: earlier, the four MI6 agents Yassen had seen had had a hard time blending in - although manning a pop-up street stall had been somewhat inventive, Yassen supposed. But now it was dark and the car park was full of cars but ominously devoid of people.

Had the agents been arrested by the Russian police? Or retreated to the shadows? It was impossible to be sure either way. It was perfectly possible the whole area was crawling with intelligence agents protected by the cover of darkness. 

Not to say anything of Scorpia. 

That was the primary reason the plan discomforted Yassen, even if it had been of his formulation. He could deal with the threats he could see. But he could do very little about any that weren’t obvious without giving himself away to an invisible enemy and leaving both himself and Alex exposed. 

All he was going to be able to do was get a car as close as possible to the station and hope that Alex could move quicker than a sniper’s reaction time.

It wasn’t elegant; nor foolproof. In fact, it was loaded with risk, which Yassen never liked. But sometimes one had to work within imperfect parameters.

Yassen walked slowly down the steps. What he really wanted to do was comb every inch of the car park, rooting out any enemy and dealing with them appropriately. As it was, that would be suicide. But he used his disguise to his advantage, taking a meandering route through the cars, as if he’d forgotten where his own was. It was difficult to peer in without looking obvious, and he only saw a single occupied car: a blue Ford, the couple in it too busy kissing to notice him. Was it a cover? Ought he to do something about them? Yassen decided to carry on. They weren’t in a position to take a fast and clean shot at the front of the station anyway, and if he paused to deal with them he might find he attracted unwanted attention to himself.

And so Yassen halted at the car he had left earlier without incident. 

The car he’d chosen was an old Lada Classic: a car that had been made popular during the Soviet era and was still one of Russia’s most loved vehicles. Another decision made in the face of a balance of risk: Yassen would have preferred something fast and heavily armoured; he also would have preferred to steal something, so that his vehicle couldn’t have been predicted. Both of those would have drawn too much attention. 

It didn’t mean that Yassen couldn’t take precautions, though, even if they were necessarily cursory. He grappled for the key and dropped it. Stooping to pick it up, he flashed the light from his phone under the car: the most obvious place to put an explosive. 

It was clear. Yassen got to his feet and unlocked the car. In the back was a duffle bag he had placed there that morning; inside, amongst a host of other things, a Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun, favoured by the US Marines; a 5.56mm fully automatic Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle; and two 9mm handguns: a Beretta and a CZ 75. But it was the diazafluoren spray, tucked into one of the inside pockets, Yassen wanted; he used it to coat the steering wheel and dashboard, and the lever to open the bonnet. He texted Alex while he waited for it to work.

_Ten minutes. I will give you one minute’s warning. A maroon Lada will be waiting directly outside. You will need to move fast once you exit._

He didn’t get a response, and he wondered if Alex was still angry. For all that Alex could be remarkably reckless in the field, Yassen mused, he certainly had some inconvenient and selective morals to go with it. At this stage, what was there to choose between MI6 and Scorpia? Both meant almost certain death for either one of them.

He should have taken a firmer hand when Alex was younger; that was the truth of the matter. 

Irritated, Yassen busied himself with checking that each of the weapons in the duffle bag was loaded, and then checked on the diazafluoren. No fingerprints. Good. He started the car, and only then did he text Alex again.

_One minute. Do not linger._

Yassen closed the door and slowly counted the seconds. When he got to thirty he pulled out of the space and drove the car around the edge of the car park.

His phone lit up as he pulled to a halt in front of the station.

 _Coming_ , Alex’s message said.

Two seconds. 

Then the world erupted.

There was a huge bang, like a cannon. A crash as the windows on the left hand side of the station shattered outwards. Smoke poured into the open air. 

Yassen could only watch it, shocked into stillness, wondering, precisely, what he was supposed to do next.

* * *

**1 October, 12.30am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Vyborg, Russia**

For more than a second, Alex lay where he was, his ears ringing faintly from the blast. It only took that time for the air to become like fog.

Even though he was the one who had launched the grenade - retrieved from his backpack - its effects were still a shock. MI6’s tech unit, which had given it to him three months ago, had told him it would do no more than release a shock wave and a plume of gas that would be enough of a distraction and cover to allow him to disappear. He hadn’t expected it to work quite so well. 

It was a good thing he hadn’t used it in the club in Malmö; the chaos it would have caused in an overcrowded, confined space would have been devastating. 

Even here Alex already felt claustrophobic. In another second he wouldn’t be able to see the exit. He had to move.

He hauled himself up from the ground and lurched towards where he thought the door was, coughing on the thick air. _Non-lethal,_ the tech department had told him. Alex felt like he was about to suffocate. 

It was a relief when he fell through the exit and into the cold, clean air. He stopped, still spluttering as he gulped in greedy lungfuls of it.

 _Do not linger_ , Yassen had said. Alex only remembered the warning when he heard the crack of a gunshot and a bullet whizzed past his left ear.

He ducked, throwing himself towards the car at the foot of the steps. The door was shoved open from the inside in time with the crack of another bullet. Alex hurled himself in. He was still grappling to yank the door closed as the car jerked away from the curb with a squeal of tyres, heading towards the exit.

“There was - ” he started, and was abruptly cut off by another coughing fit. A bottle of water was thrust in his direction, and Alex took it, glugging down half the bottle in one go. They’d turned out onto the road by the time he could speak again.

“There was a woman,” he started again. His voice was hoarse. “MI6 - ”

“Quiet,” said Yassen harshly.

Alex paused. Noted the way Yassen’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead. How fast they were going. Too fast. With a feeling of cold dread, he twisted in his seat to look behind them.

Light flooded through the back window. Headlights. They were being followed. And Yassen was putting his foot down.

Street lamps and terraced buildings whipped past in a blur. The streets were deserted - which was just as well, because they had to have been pushing seventy. They shot around a corner and Alex was thrown against the door, pain shooting up his elbow. 

“How many?” he asked, rubbing it.

“One. For now.”

“Can we lose them?” Alex looked in the wing mirror. The headlights seemed awfully close. He felt doubt rise.

“Yes.” Yassen’s tone was certain. “There are weapons in the back.”

It took Alex a second to realise what Yassen meant. 

Right. Of course. Alex could lose them by shooting at them. Why was he surprised?

“More urgency,” Yassen bit out. Alex was still for a second more, weighing up his options, before he realised there weren’t any, and, gritting his teeth, hauled himself out of the passenger seat.

In the back of the car, their speed was even more obvious, every bump in the road sending shockwaves through Alex’s joints. There was a bag on the back seat and, sure enough, it contained a cluster of guns. Alex hesitated for another second, trying to decide on his arsenal. All good for different things. Depending on what he was planning to do.

And how he was going to manage to shoot at a car behind him, from inside the cramped space of the Lada.

That problem was solved for him. The clatter of a machine gun suddenly broke through the night; Alex ducked instinctively. The back window cracked and then broke, large pieces of safety glass falling onto the seat as the spray of bullets buried themselves into the passenger seat Alex had vacated moments before. If he’d still been there he might have found himself severely injured at best. At worst he’d have been killed instantly.

Whoever was chasing them wasn’t here to play nice. They were taking them, dead or alive.

The knowledge that it might be MI6 sent a jolt of nausea through Alex’s stomach. 

“Alex?” Even Yassen sounded on edge.

“I’m OK.” Alex dragged himself up, scooping up the assault rifle sitting on top of the bag. He knew what he was going to do. He checked it, found it loaded, and then levelled it through the now-open frame at the back. 

It was a near impossible shot. The Lada was still hurtling along; the other car perhaps fifteen metres behind, smoother than the Lada but still all over the place target-wise. And Alex had no way of knowing if it was armoured or not.

Another chatter of bullets; Alex saw the spark of the gun behind. But as if Yassen had sensed it coming, they were already skidding around another corner, the bullets going wide. Alex fell sideways but immediately pulled himself up again, taking aim as the car behind righted itself.

Then he fired. 

The noise was incredible - his ears ached in protest. The headlights from the car were so bright he was shooting almost blindly, letting out a long spray of bullets into the dark night.

He couldn’t tell if he’d found his target. Not at this speed - not in this light. 

But he’d got lucky. 

The car behind suddenly sagged downwards on the right. A terrible screech as it yanked sideways and then mounted a kerb, and carried on going. There was the sound of shattering glass and a crash as it ploughed straight through a shop window and came to rest, half in the building and half out of it.

The Lada raced on alone. 

They were safe. Somehow, impossibly, Alex had lost them.

He laid the gun on top of the bag and climbed back into the passenger seat. Yassen glanced at him as he tugged on his seatbelt.

“You missed,” he said. He didn’t sound pleased.

“No, I didn’t,” Alex said. 

A pause. “You were aiming for the tyres.”

“That’s right,” said Alex, almost defiantly.

Yassen gave him another glance before his eyes flickered back to the road. His fingers twitched on the steering wheel.

“Very inventive.” Somehow the dryness withered the compliment into an insult. 

“It worked, didn’t it?” 

“Unsurprisingly, no,” said Yassen. He sounded irritated.

Alex frowned. And then twisted around again. 

More headlights. Another car. Or was it two? Alex thought he saw the flash of a second set of lights behind the first. Both rapidly gaining on them.

_Shit._

Alex unclipped his seatbelt and raised himself out of his seat again, but found a vice-like grip on his arm.

“You drive,” Yassen said. “I will deal with this.”

He had unbuckled his seatbelt and lifted himself out of his seat with cat-like grace before Alex could even begin to formulate an argument. Alex was forced to lunge over to grab the steering wheel. The whole car lurched as he clambered over the handbrake and gearbox. They veered dangerously before he could straighten again.

Alex glanced around at Yassen, crouched in the back. He had taken up the shotgun and was checking the chamber.

“Don’t - ”

“Eyes on the road,” Yassen snapped. “And faster.”

Alex gritted his teeth, right foot flattening on the accelerator. He had no idea where they were supposed to be going; shops and houses continued to blur past them as he urged the Lada on. Maybe he could lose their pursuers after all? But when he glanced in the mirror, he knew it was hopeless. In the mere seconds he had been driving the reflection of the headlights had already doubled in size. The Lada had been chosen for being low-profile, not a full-on car chase. 

And something else. They were coming up to a bridge. Straight in front and over the other side were blue and red flashing lights. A police car, turned sideways, blocking the exit from the bridge. 

Alex assessed the options. Continue driving over the bridge and they’d crash straight into the police car. At this speed there was a good chance the cars behind would join the pile up and they’d all end up dead. No. Alex had to turn around. If he was quick about it he might even manage to lose them all entirely.

“Hold on,” Alex said, right before he wrenched the steering wheel around and yanked up the handbrake.

A screech and the smell of burning rubber. The Lada spun one hundred and eighty degrees before stopping dead. Alex shunted the gearbox into first gear and they shot off, back towards the cars following them, just as he heard the squeal of a window behind being rolled down.

With another clench of his gut, Alex knew what was about to happen. But there was nothing he could do.

Two shots as they passed the first car - like explosions in the cramped space of the Lada. The driver of the second car, right behind, realised what was about to happen; it swerved suddenly away, as if an extra five metres would make any difference to the relentlessness of Yassen’s bullets. 

It didn’t. Two more loud cracks and it was over.

Foot still on the accelerator, Alex glanced in his mirror. 

Both cars had lost control. The second car was careering sideways, and Alex caught a glimpse of the shattered window on the driver’s side, right before it collided with the first car with a sickening crunch. The first car flipped and flew forwards towards the bridge, landing on its roof; the second continued to skid, colliding with a wall that promptly collapsed onto it.

If there had been any doubts about the outcome of Yassen’s shots, the devastation behind them would have put an end to them.

There were several seconds of silence. Alex forced himself to concentrate on the road ahead, keeping his foot down, conscious that there was a good chance they would be followed by the police - if the squad car could make it past the ruined vehicles they’d left behind - or that another pursuer might suddenly loom out of the darkness.

It never happened. Alex followed the main road left. It seemed to be taking them out of town. After a few minutes, Yassen climbed from the back of the car, lowering himself into the passenger seat beside Alex.

“Continue on this road,” he said as he reached for his seatbelt. “It will take us to the motorway.”

He sounded utterly calm, unperturbed. Alex gave him a sidelong look.

“Was that MI6 or Scorpia?” Somehow his voice remained steady.

“I have no idea,” was Yassen’s response. A pause, and then: “Does it matter?” There was an edge to his voice; an unspoken challenge. 

Alex gripped the steering wheel and said nothing.

* * *

**1 October, 1.10am, Moscow Standard Time**

**15 miles south of Vyborg, Russia**

They drove for the next twenty minutes in silence. Yassen had no objections. He waited until they were fifteen miles down the motorway and then he told Alex to pull off, giving quiet, clipped instructions as they mirrored the route he had taken earlier that day. They pulled into a lay-by on a deserted road, about twenty yards behind a dark and empty Toyota, and Alex turned off the engine. 

Yassen dug into the inside pocket of his coat. In the short drive he had already peeled off the prosthetics he had been wearing and thrown them into the back; the coat he would get rid of as soon as he got out of the car. He found the Toyota’s key and held it out to Alex. 

“We’re changing to the car in front,” he said. “Check it for tampering. I will deal with the Lada.”

Alex didn’t take the key. After a second Yassen lowered the hand holding it out.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. 

Alex’s gaze flickered in Yassen’s direction. His lips - thin at the best of times - were melded into a hard, unhappy line, as they had been since they’d left Vyborg.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” Alex said.

It didn’t surprise Yassen that this was the reason for Alex’s annoyance - he’d suspected as much - but he still felt a small twinge of exasperation.

“I have killed a lot of people,” he said.

He didn’t really think that Alex needed a reminder that he had chosen to go on the run with a professional killer. But something in Alex’s expression flickered, the hard mask giving way, for a split second, to an emotion more difficult to grasp hold of. Resignation? Or was it disappointment that, despite Alex having made his feelings clear on the train, Yassen had just shot dead people that might have been Alex’s former colleagues?

Yassen’s sense of exasperation was growing stronger. They were running from one of the most merciless terrorist organisations on Earth, and an intelligence agency whose reputation likewise contained no shortage of ruthlessness. 

“The alternative was allowing them to kill us,” Yassen said. “There was no other option.”

“There’s nearly always another option,” Alex fired back. _I shot out their tyres_ , was the unspoken addition.

“I had a clean shot to finish it as we passed,” said Yassen, unfazed. “By contrast, shooting at their tyres was dangerous and risky.”

Scepticism flickered in Alex’s features. He opened his mouth.

“I’m not referring to the difficulty of the shot,” Yassen cut across him before he could speak. “The risk was in leaving them alive.” The speed at which the second and third cars had appeared couldn’t have been a coincidence; they had clearly been in contact with the first. “If we had left the second set of pursuers alive, who is to say that further cars would not have appeared? We might have missed the opportunity to lose them altogether.”

A noticeable clench of Alex’s jaw made it clear he thought this might have been the better option. 

Yassen couldn’t help a small frown, wondering if Alex needed another reminder of what was at stake. Did he think that Yassen killed indiscriminately? Yassen had never killed anyone just because he could. Every single death on his hands had been carefully considered - sometimes in only a single second, and sometimes it was only a matter of money, but it was always weighed against the alternative; the execution only delivered when Yassen had decided it was the better option. As he had here.

“They will kill you,” he said. “Whether it is Scorpia who catches you or MI6, Scorpia will make sure you end up dead.”

Another tightening of the muscles along Alex’s jawline. He looked away, out of the window. Yassen regarded his profile, the wariness in him rising. Alex was no contract killer, of course, but he _was_ a successful intelligence agent. It wasn’t unreasonable to expect somewhat more of a killer instinct. Instead, Alex had - once in the station, presumably trying to avoid the MI6 woman he’d referred to, and once during the car chase - taken the option that was riskier to him, to them, to avoid hurting anyone.

Did Alex really have such a low sense of self-preservation?

“You have killed before,” Yassen pointed out with barely concealed impatience. “To save your own life. Or those of others.” He had seen it, first hand, on occasions where their paths had crossed.

“Yes, but - ” Alex stopped up short, leaving Yassen to imagine what was supposed to fill in the blank. There was a shade of self-loathing in Alex’s expression that he didn’t like. Probably, Yassen guessed, Alex never liked killing. He did it when he had to. Perhaps - Yassen’s suspicion grew - Alex still had a naive sense of the innocent and the culpable, and harboured the belief that his own life wasn’t worth the lives of those he deemed to be in the former category.

Earlier Yassen had thought Alex’s morals selective and inconvenient. Now he wondered if they weren’t actively dangerous. Whether, if Yassen had walked away in Cologne as he had contemplated, Alex wouldn’t have ended up dead. Both of them had come close enough even with Yassen’s intervention.

Alex was quiet. He still looked deeply unhappy. 

“I won’t apologise for saving our lives,” Yassen said.

“I’m not asking you to,” Alex said after a moment. His gaze shifted in Yassen’s direction. “This is my fault. I knew what I was signing up for.”

 _What sort of man you are,_ he might have said, but didn’t. Yassen wouldn’t apologise for that, either; he had never made any attempt to disguise it. Nor would he have been particularly surprised, having had the reminder, if Alex had changed his mind about this whole endeavour. Yassen was under no illusions that, to someone with Alex’s sense of right and wrong, he represented a problem.

“You can walk away,” Yassen said quietly. He paused. “I can give you a safe location. Somewhere you’re unlikely to be found.” At least Alex might stay alive that way, even if his morals would not allow him to justify staying with Yassen.

Alex’s gaze, dark in the dim glow of the headlights, was penetrating. Yassen was reminded of another moment, more than a week ago, when he had been meant to shoot Alex dead and the same gaze had stopped him. The same gaze Alex had fixed him with when Yassen had asked him to come. That gaze that seemed to know Yassen just a little better than Yassen might have liked.

Alex held out his hand. For a moment, Yassen didn’t move.

“You said we don’t have much time,” Alex said. His tone had shifted, from hard and angry to calm resolve. Somehow, something beyond Yassen’s sight had made Alex come to terms with what had happened. Or if not come to terms with - at least able to live with, for the time being. He wasn’t walking away, in any case.

Yassen hesitated for another second. Wondered if they weren’t simply delaying the inevitable.

Then he dropped the Toyota key into Alex’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, I owe a massive debt to Valak, who continues to put up with my fretting and plotting and always offers kind words and helpful feedback. Also a huge thanks to TheInverseUniverse, who answered all my (inevitably stupid) questions about guns for this chapter, and victoryhonorfame, who suggested a car chase (though given the trouble it caused me, everyone can rest assured I'm never attempting one again!).


	4. October II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Valak - always, but especially for this chapter. She has held my hand as I moaned and sobbed through writing it, read multiple (wildly different) drafts and beta'd on top of that. The patience of a saint. I am eternally grateful to have her as a friend.
> 
> A further note: This is still slow burn, but the gen-ness of this fic is in rapid decline. If you are vehemently anti Alex/Yassen, this may not be the fic for you.

**1 October, 6.45am, Moscow Standard Time**

**West shore of Lake Onega, North West Russia**

They drove for another six hours before they stopped again.

Yassen had taken the wheel after Vyborg, and Alex woke as he pulled up in another layby and switched off the engine. The sun had yet to come up, but was on its way, the sky seeped in a medium, inky blue. Alex felt groggy, but less exhausted. His bladder was aching. He opened the door and stumbled off in the crisp early morning air to relieve himself, his legs stiff from the hours in the car.

When he came back, he realised that it was less layby and more scenic viewpoint they had stopped in: a muddy outcrop that looked out onto an enormous lake. The Toyota’s boot was open, revealing the boxes and bags Alex had clocked when he had searched it on the outskirts of Vyborg. Yassen was leaning against the side of the car, eating what looked like yoghurt with some sort of cereal or granola from a plastic pot. Now that the prosthetics were gone, his short blond hair in evidence once more and the merest hint of a shadow on his jaw instead of a full beard, he looked as though he’d dropped thirty years. Much less harmless than the old man that had staggered up the train carriage. 

He glanced up as Alex approached.

“Are you hungry?” he inquired, tone mild. The tense atmosphere of the darkened car outside Vyborg long since dissipated. Why should it linger? Yassen had given Alex an out, and Alex had chosen - again - to throw his lot in with Yassen instead. For now, they were stuck with one another.

“Starving.” 

Yassen put the plastic pot down on the roof of the car and disappeared to the boot. Alex waited. A few seconds later Yassen reappeared, offering him his own pot and spoon. Alex found himself unsurprised at the preparation. 

“Thanks.” Alex took it from him, and Yassen retrieved his own breakfast from the car roof and leaned back against the car again. Alex settled against the passenger door.

“Are you feeling better?”

Yassen’s question was delivered neutrally; it was impossible to pick at the underlying meaning. Better about what had happened at Vyborg? Better because Alex had been tired, and he’d slept some? Alex suspected Yassen was being vague on purpose. 

“Yes,” he said, deciding that it was the truth either way. Sleep, as it often did, had provided perspective; the ability to separate adrenaline and shock from reason. The cars hadn’t been armoured. The shots aimed at the Lada had been intended to kill - or risked it, anyway. Together, those points pointed towards a freelancer, and someone who preferred Alex dead. 

On balance, more likely Scorpia than MI6.

Alex had to cling to that thought, anyway, or he was fairly sure he’d throw up the yoghurt he was currently spooning into his mouth.

“Where are we?” he asked, as a means of distracting himself.

“Near Petrozavodsk,” said Yassen. “I’ll show you.”

He deposited his now-empty bowl into the boot, and returned with a large map he unfolded onto the bonnet. Alex stood next to him, looking at where he pointed. Even in the short time they’d been on the grassy verge, the sky had lightened some, the sun close to coming up, making it easier to read. 

The size of the lake in front of them was even more obvious on the map; it had to be one of the largest in Europe. _Оне́жское о́зеро_. Lake Onega.

“I suggest we go north around it,” Yassen said, tracing his finger around the top of the lake. “It’s longer but quicker.”

“Where are we going?” Alex surprised himself by not having asked before. But then he’d been too exhausted - and maybe shell-shocked - to do anything other than close his eyes and try to block out thought entirely.

“Here.” Yassen moved his finger perhaps six hundred miles to the right, just to the east of a city bordering the White Sea. Alex squinted at it. 

Arkhangelsk. Ark Angel. 

Of course it was. 

His eyes skated to where Yassen’s finger had paused. Next to another lake - much smaller than Onega - and Alex read the Cyrillic letters: Tel’dozero. There were no obvious towns nearby; even Arkhangelsk looked like it might be eighty or a hundred miles away. It looked a lot like it was in the middle of a forest; Alex couldn’t even see any roads leading to it. 

“That looks…quiet,” he said, unable to rid the wryness from his voice.

“That’s rather the point,” Yassen said, eyebrows lifting. “There is a cabin there I purchased ten years ago. In cash. It should be safe.”

Safe. Alex hadn’t given over much thought to what that word meant, in practice. Safety in the last week had just meant not having an active tail he had to find some way of throwing off. Short hours snatched in hostels with double locked doors and a gun on the bedside table. What had he expected when he met up with Yassen? Weeks, months, of the same?

Maybe. Alex had spent most of the last ten years living on the edge. If he were completely honest, he’d sort of thought the rest of his life would be spent the same way. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Yassen – pragmatic, hyper focused on survival – had other ideas.

“OK?” Yassen had sensed his disquiet.

What did one _do_ in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, when you weren’t on a job – or about to go on one – and you didn’t expect someone to burst through the door to kill you at any moment?

“I hope you brought some good board games,” Alex settled on at last.

Yassen’s lips twitched at that, and the knot in Alex’s stomach eased, just a fraction. Yassen had been like a wound coil of tension ever since Alex had met him on the train from Finland: like a poised cobra, hyper alert and ready to strike if provoked. Now he seemed more relaxed; more like he had been that night in London when Alex had found him sitting in his bedroom. 

“ _What’s my going away present, then?”_

_“I’m the one going away. You should be giving me the present, surely?”_

He met Yassen’s gaze. Yassen held it, blue and unblinking, for a split second, and then jerked his away, nodding at Alex’s breakfast.

“You should finish,” he said. “And then we will go. Will you drive?”

Calm. Unaffected. If he had guessed what had been going through Alex’s head, he gave no sign of it. Alex knew it was deliberate - though whether to keep him guessing or because Yassen wanted to shut down that particular train of thought was unclear. Alex was, again, unsurprised. It may have been years since he had spent so much time in Yassen’s company, but Yassen had never been the type to let anyone into his thinking unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I can drive,” Alex said.

The food had swept away the last vestiges of sleepiness; he felt tired, but alert. He ate the last spoonful of yoghurt, and Yassen took the pot from him, handing him the key instead as Alex gathered up the map.

“To nowhere?” Alex asked.

Yassen arched his eyebrows. “To Tel’dozero,” he corrected.

* * *

**1 October, c. 10.30pm, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

It took them a further fifteen hours to reach the cabin. 

They changed cars twice more, the second time to a jeep that could handle the off-roading necessary to reach the cabin near Tel’dozero. Yassen drove the last leg of the journey. There was a dirt road leading down to the village that skirted the lake, three miles from the cabin, but he avoided it, taking the same route through the forest he had taken two years previous: the last time he had visited. It was pitch black when they arrived, the car’s headlamps throwing the only light into the small clearing a hundred yards from the water’s edge.

Yassen had taken extreme precautions on his previous visits. No one ought to have known about the cabin. But two and a half decades meant that caution was almost hardwired into him. Yassen checked the exterior thoroughly before even stepping inside, and then he and Alex spent an hour and a half stripping the whole place down. 

Alex didn’t blink at any of this; simply asked Yassen which parts of the cabin he wanted him to check. A reminder, if Yassen had needed one, that Alex’s recklessness was, at least, underpinned by experience these days. 

He was still re-assembling the sofa when Yassen returned to the area shared by the living room and kitchenette. He looked tired again, the need for sleep creasing around his eyes; his fair hair hung in limp strands over his forehead. His shoulders were hunched into his jacket, bracing himself against the cold. He was in for an unpleasant shock, Yassen reflected with a small trace of amusement. They were miles north of the British Isles; not far short of the Arctic Circle. The nights would get below freezing before they got to November.

“The smaller bedroom is the warmest,” Yassen said. 

Alex’s head jerked up, gaze sharp; he hadn’t heard Yassen’s light approach. Some of the tension eased from his face on seeing Yassen standing there. 

“Sorry?”

“There are two bedrooms. The smaller one is warmer, if the cold worries you.”

Alex squared his shoulders, forcing them to drop, and Yassen had to fight a smile. But Alex didn’t look away. There seemed to be a light challenge in his brown gaze, as if to say: _Well, we’re here. What now?_

Perhaps, Yassen was forced to reflect, the subtext of the message had been lost.

“I will have the other room,” he said, rather more plainly.

This time he was sure the message had been received. Alex’s gaze didn’t falter but it did seem to gain a certain edge.

“You _do_ know that’s not why I came, don’t you?”

Yassen shrugged, concerned rather less with cushioning feelings than with making the position clear. They could pretend otherwise, but it was difficult to avoid the context in which he had asked Alex to come. Alex needed to understand the aberration that had been; the deviation from the personal rules Yassen to which had, until London, adhered strictly. Yassen’s sexual partners were always strangers: selected carefully but randomly without a discernible pattern; sometimes paid, sometimes not. Never, ever connected to a job. He didn’t particularly care to examine what had provoked him into breaking those rules in London, but he remained acutely aware of the fact that he and Alex had both now failed to walk away when all logic dictated that they should have done.

That was not a promising route to survival, for either of them. 

“Then we do not have a problem,” he said. 

“No,” said Alex evenly. Firmly. A clear message that there was only one person in the room suggesting that there might be.

Yassen nearly frowned, wondering if there was an implication of vanity on his part. The physical attraction, he had thought, was mutual. Alex had lured _him_ to bed; not the other way around. But perhaps he had allowed himself to get carried away. Alex was a young man: in his prime. Good looking, on anyone’s view. Yassen was too, but he wasn’t twenty-four anymore. He could not, he reflected with a trace of bitterness that surprised him, assume that Alex found him attractive. Certainly not enough for Alex to stake his life and moral backbone on it, which was exactly what he had done in Vyborg.

Perhaps Alex’s choice to stay had been rather more driven by cold-headed logic than Yassen had assumed. Yes, Yassen represented an issue for Alex’s moral compass. He also had rather more experience in evading capture. So long as they kept their heads down, and avoided run-ins with their respective sides, Yassen likely offered better odds for Alex’s own survival than if they separated. It was possible - maybe even likely - that that was the conclusion Alex had reached.

There was a certain sour irony in that revelation; that Yassen, who had strived for decades to delete any predilection towards sentiment, should be the one to be driven by it. But, on balance, the better outcome. Yassen knew himself well; knew that, whatever his attachment to Alex Rider, there were hard limits to how far that would go - that he would draw the line when he was forced to. It was, in many ways, much simpler not to have to wonder if Alex was capable of doing the same thing. 

“We should fetch the supplies inside,” he said. Voice neutral. Setting the issue to one side.

Alex looked away. “Yeah.” He didn’t immediately move - even to continue putting the sofa cushions back in place - instead glancing around the cabin. The sudden flatness of his mood was palpable; a subtle malaise settling over him that Yassen could perceive but not quite penetrate. Yassen watched him, eyes narrowed, attempting to pinpoint the source of it. Not Yassen. What, then?

He thought back to Lake Onega, of Alex’s hesitation. 

“ _That looks...quiet.”_

“ _I_ _hope you brought some good board games._ ”

Not quite the enthusiastic recognition of a safe house that Yassen might have expected.

“How long are we planning to stay here, again?” Alex asked at last, confirming Yassen’s suspicions. 

Yassen continued to look at him, perplexed. The only thing that should have been on Alex’s mind was that this was the safest place for them. Not already the question of when they might leave.

“Until the beginning of December,” Yassen said. “Then the snow comes.”

“Two months,” Alex muttered in a tone that provided little reassurance. “Right, then.”

Alex might have put his safety in his hands, Yassen reflected, but, so far, he didn’t seem to like any of his decisions. It was difficult to know what to do about that. If anything. What did Alex want from him?

“Supplies,” he said coolly, and left Alex with the sofa.

* * *

**8 October, 9pm, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

The days in Tel’dozero were long. The activity list, as Alex had surmised, was short.

It wasn’t an ideal combination. 

Particularly when an assassin and a spy were forced to share close quarters.

Yassen, Alex had observed with little surprise, did not seem to find life in the cabin arduous. He went about his day - _his_ day, because he and Alex seemed to run on entirely different schedules (or, rather, Yassen simply didn’t keep one) - with the same calm, methodical approach Alex had seen him apply to complex criminal operations. Everything he did was with a precision and deliberateness that never gave the indication that he was bored, or looking for something to do. He seemed to find ways of entertaining himself that he didn’t share with Alex, and Alex wasn’t sure he wanted to ask about. 

Or maybe he did, a bit. On their eighth night in Tel’dozero, as he paced the length of the cabin, wondering if it wasn’t too late to go out for a walk and already knowing that it was, he found himself eying his new housemate. Yassen was sitting at the small table in the corner of the living room, writing on a single sheet of paper, the way Alex had often seen him do over the last week. He had been there for the last hour; he had already dropped two pages covered in a thin, elegant script into the fire without explanation. The fresh piece of paper in front of him was already half full. Alex could see that the lines he had written were short, as they often were - not long paragraphs of prose. Was he making a list? What Yassen would be making a list of, exactly, Alex wasn’t sure. 

Maybe where they would go next. It would make sense to burn any musings on that front. 

“ _Alex_.”

Alex halted. Raised his eyes from Yassen’s sheet of paper to see Yassen had paused. His pen hovered over the page; his gaze - loaded with warning - was fixed on Alex.

It was impossible to tell whether it was the pacing or the staring that had done it. Either way, Alex probably ought to have reeled himself in. Yassen was never the most talkative of people, but his tone that day had been distinctly clipped; that, combined with the noticeably tight grip he had kept on his book earlier, and the longer-than-usual workout that had kept him out of the cabin for three hours, should have alerted Alex to Yassen’s fraying patience.

In fact, Alex reflected, it was quite impressive Yassen had lasted this long. Yassen didn’t often attempt to hide his impatience with those he considered to be a nuisance. 

“Sorry,” he muttered. He wasn’t stupid - he’d seen first hand what Yassen did to those who irritated him. He wasn’t afraid of Yassen - was reasonably certain Yassen wouldn’t try to kill him, however annoying he was - but he knew Yassen was more than capable of making his point without causing permanent damage. 

He also knew he’d be lucky to get a second warning.

Sure enough, Yassen’s icy expression suggested that he was rather less interested in apologies than he was about Alex ceasing to wear down the floorboards. 

“Sit,” he said, with the same tone Alex had heard him use too many times with a gun in his hand.

Alex remained where he was, a spark of resentment rising in him, in spite of himself, at the thought of letting Yassen think that he could be commanded so easily.

Yassen didn’t move either. If possible, something in his face cooled another degree. 

The stand off lasted mere seconds. It only took that long for Alex to decide that the downsides of sharing living quarters with only a hacked off Yassen Gregorovich for company outweighed the appeal of a fight as a temporary break in the monotony.

He went to sit on the sofa. There was a book in Russian lying abandoned on the coffee table, and, with a certain amount of ill grace, Alex picked it up and opened it to the middle of chapter one.

The words swam on the page in front of him. His eyes, scratchy with lack of sleep, refused to absorb the Cyrillic script - just like every other time he had picked up the stupid book that week.

He let out a long, steadying breath. 

This shouldn’t be difficult. Why was he so incapable of Yassen’s patience, the ability to take each day with a calm occupation, no day ever the same, and yet devoid of any excitement? Yassen seemed to manage. He read, in what seemed to be a variety of languages; he wrote; he listened to the news. Occasionally he meditated. He worked out for at least two hours each day, often finishing with a short dip in the nearby lake, much to Alex’s disconcertion.

“Have you been _swimming?_ ” he’d asked in disbelief the first morning, when Yassen had come into the cabin with damp hair and a thick overcoat, carrying a wet towel and trunks. “It’s - what - three degrees out there?”

“It is ten degrees,” Yassen had said, with almost an ease at correcting Alex’s tendency towards exaggeration that could have been practised. “Cold water swimming’s very good for you,” he had added, eying the sugar Alex was spooning into his coffee. “You should try it.”

“I think I’ll pass thanks,” had been Alex’s muttered response. Yassen hadn’t asked again.

Alex mostly ran a lot, although he was quickly learning that there was only so much running you could do. Evidently Yassen thought so too, because Alex had been getting increasingly hard looks as he came in from his long circuits of the lake, the unspoken disapproval and displeasure crackling as much as the roaring fire that was constantly on the go in the cabin during daylight hours.

He glanced up from his book. Yassen had returned to writing, his right hand moving steadily across the page. His facial muscles had relaxed again, his gaze almost soft under long, lowered lashes. There was a dreamy quality to his features Alex hadn’t seen before they’d come to Tel’dozero; a half-smile on his lips that might have drawn any number of appreciative glances had they been in a crowded bar.

Alex shifted his gaze away again, determined to halt that train of thought. Yassen had already more or less accused him of following him into the wilderness on the chance of another shag, which had been insulting enough; Alex wasn’t about to degrade himself by giving Yassen any reason to think that he might have been right.

It was just the combination of the boredom and tiredness, mixed with the isolation that had threatened to smother him since the day they’d arrived, which seemed to make his brain constantly short-fuse.

Yassen’s frequent silences didn’t make it any easier. In fact, the combination of those and the way Yassen’s gaze seemed to be invariably, almost determinedly, fixed on whatever he happened to be doing every time Alex walked from the shower to his room with nothing more than a towel wrapped around his waist, made Alex wonder more than once if this wasn’t the assassin version of playing hard to get. It seemed a bit of a long shot - especially given the hard boundaries Yassen had set the night they’d arrived. But the alternative - that the silence was Yassen’s way of communicating that he didn’t want Alex there at all - was worse.

 _Stop it,_ he thought, and closed his eyes, trying to stave off the ache lurking between his temples. The silence didn’t have to mean anything. It wasn’t like Yassen had ever been _chatty._ Alex was just used to living with Tom, and the steady stream of consciousness that went with that - about physiological courses, football practice and Tom’s love life (or non-existence thereof). Quiet was an alien concept, and it was making him over-analyse.

It was the sound of footsteps and rustling paper that made him open his eyes again. He found Yassen standing next to the fire, having just thrown his latest sheet into the flames. It was already catching, its edges curling and disintegrating. But Yassen wasn’t watching it. He was looking at Alex. 

“Are you all right?” he asked, with something indiscernible. Caution, perhaps. Or reluctance, Alex’s mind suggested. He put a stop to it before it could go into overdrive.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.

* * *

When he woke, hours later, he wasn’t in the cabin.

He was in a square, concrete cell without windows. Strip lighting hung down from the ceiling, stark and fluorescent, making his eyes ache. He was sitting on a hard-back chair, his hands tied behind him, without knowing how he had got there. A man with a balaclava loomed in front of him. Alex was aware of others in the room, but they were no more than dark, menacing shapes, lurking in the corners.

“Where is it, Rider?”

It was the man in the balaclava who had spoken. His voice was gravelly. Alex recognised it at the same time as knowing that, here and now, it wasn’t important. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said automatically. It was the way he had been trained, but, oddly, on this occasion he didn’t seem to be able to remember what it was he was supposed to be denying knowledge of.

A click. The flicker of a flame atop a lighter; small and orange and somehow hypnotising. Alex’s stomach lurched - the realisation of what was going to happen much sharper than it should have been, as though it had happened before.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t know anything - ”

The flame was brought to Alex’s neck. A burst of bright white pain, searing and unrelenting, as his skin burnt and then blistered. He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed. 

Then, just as suddenly, the pain was gone, leaving only a dull ache and the weighty memory of pain.

“ _Run_ ,” someone whispered in his ear, and Alex did - snapping his eyes open and finding himself hurtling down an unfamiliar corridor. The crack of a gunshot at the same time something hot glanced off his bicep. The feeling of something trickling down his arm as he pushed on, towards his target. Time seemed to press on him, heavy and urgent, without any context.

He reached the end of the corridor and fell through a door; it banged heavily against the wall of a darkened flat. There was a gun in his hand, and he raised it out of instinct, even as he realised whose flat this was. 

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Mrs Jones said, stepping into the pale light thrown through the window. 

“I’ve got to,” said Alex. “It’s you or me.” He knew it was the truth. He just didn’t understand why.

“You haven’t got it in you,” she said. “You never have.”

Alex pulled the trigger. The bullet exploded out of the pistol in his hand in a burst of orange light - too bright to be realistic. It seemed to fly in slow motion towards Special Operations’ Chief Executive. 

Except Mrs Jones was no longer standing there. Alex was. 

Time seemed to warp and then snap back together in a blaze of agony as the bullet hit him in the chest. _Too painful to be real_? Or maybe not painful enough. Alex put his hand to his ribs and came away with a red palm. He fell backwards almost automatically - more because he thought he should than because he needed to. His shoulders hit the frame of a window. His breaths were coming out in ragged gasps. Mrs Jones was standing over him, and he knew he’d lost.

“You were too late,” she said.

Alex raised his head to look out of the window, just in time to see London explode in a ball of flame.

* * *

**9 October, 6.30am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

When Yassen woke before sunrise the next morning, it was with a sense of unease.

He lay in bed for a while, trying to pinpoint the cause. Were he on an assignment, he would have got up immediately, putting the feeling down to an awareness that danger was nearby. But danger was far removed. If anyone had broken in, they would have attempted to kill him whilst he slept, and they hadn’t. In any event, a break in was exceedingly unlikely. Yassen had kept a careful eye on the reports; he was sure that the trail to him and Alex had gone dead - had even helped that along, by a few well-chosen plants of information leading to Vladivostok instead. And they were not exactly in a place where they could be found accidentally. 

The darkness gradually lifted around him as he lay there, the muddiest of colours bleeding subtly back into the room as the night receded. His restlessness remained. It occurred to him that perhaps Alex was rubbing off on him. 

Alex - who couldn’t seem to sit still for ten minutes, who exhausted himself with long runs, only to come back to the cabin and begin pacing. Not what Yassen would have expected, even having picked up on Alex’s disquiet the day they had arrived. To Yassen, killing time was almost as natural as breathing. He had spent hours a day, weeks at a time, sitting in a room behind a sniper rifle, waiting for his opportunity, unable to do anything but watch for his target. A few months in the middle of a forest, where he was free to work out, to read, to write, to listen to the news in his own time, was hardly a strain for him. In a way, it was almost a holiday. 

Or it might have been, had he not invited the near-constant distraction of Alex Rider along with him. 

So far Yassen had held off doing very much about it. Perhaps his agitation that morning was a sign of his frustration. From the way Alex inhaled two cups of black coffee and a slice of toast before disappearing for a long run every morning, to his inability to sit down without constantly fidgeting, the urge to interfere gnawed Yassen like an incessant itch. One that he had already forbidden himself from scratching: Alex was unlikely to welcome any attempt to tell him what to do, even if made with good intentions.

Trying to push aside his irritation, Yassen forced himself to get up and get dressed. He would work out early. Exercise would lift his mood; refocus his energy. He would have a light breakfast, perhaps read for an hour, and then go out when the sun had come up properly.

He did not particularly expect to see Alex up - Alex was a late riser from what Yassen had seen - so when he went to the kitchenette it was a surprise to pass Alex’s bedroom door and find it open.

The bedroom was empty. Yassen could see that at once even though the curtains were still drawn and the light was dim. The bed was unmade, sheets and blankets pulled and twisted as if someone had attempted to make a straightjacket out of them.

The hairs on the back of Yassen’s neck rose. 

He didn’t need to call out to know that Alex wasn’t in the cabin. Yassen was standing in the living space, and he'd passed the empty bathroom on his way from his own room. There was nowhere else Alex could be.

Yassen took a step backwards, glancing out of the window. He could still see the jeep from where he was standing. 

His gaze shifted to the right. Noted Alex’s coat still hanging up by the door. The running shoes underneath.

His uneasiness kicked up a notch.

Ostensibly, there was nothing to be concerned about. Yassen himself had gone out before sunrise before, choosing to complete his workout early or else simply take a walk around the lake before the sun came up. And Alex was capable of taking care of himself. 

But after twenty-five years, Yassen had come to trust his instincts.

He pulled down his coat from the hook and left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

* * *

As it transpired, Alex hadn’t gone far. 

It took Yassen fifteen minutes to find him next to the lake, sitting on the same rock Yassen usually left his clothes on when he went swimming, his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, his whole posture stiff and tense, as if he were a statue frozen in place. A torch and a handgun were on the rock beside him.

He was staring out at the lake, his back to Yassen. Yassen trod deliberately heavily, warning Alex of his approach. It worked; Alex’s head turned towards him at the sound of a snapped twig. His hand moved towards the gun, and then drew back when he saw who it was, tucking it back into his hoodie again.

Up close Alex looked pale, his skin almost white in the half-light. The lightest of tremors in his shoulders gave away his shivers.

Yassen halted a few feet away. Alex just looked at him. The creases under his eyes were pronounced.

“How long have you been out here?” Yassen asked. Too long, he had already concluded. Certainly at least an hour - the time Yassen had been awake. And a sweatshirt wasn’t much protection against temperatures of single figures. 

Perhaps Alex knew it because instead of answering, he said: “You didn’t have to come looking for me.”

“I was...” Yassen trailed off, wondering how to articulate the nagging anxiety that had driven him out here without anything concrete on which to pin it. He groped around for something less offensive than the truth and came up with nothing. “...concerned,” he finished, hoping that it sounded rather less of an admission than it felt.

Alex’s lip quirked, but it was bitter. “I’m OK.” He tucked his elbows inwards, as though he could physically pull some more warmth into his body that way.

“You should be inside,” said Yassen.

“Or I’ll get hypothermia?” Alex asked. There was no real bite to his tone, but Yassen caught the reference anyway. Long ago, when he’d still been a teenager, Yassen had caught him infiltrating one of his operations. Instead of killing him, Yassen had driven him out to the middle of the woods and left him tied up, half-naked, anticipating - wrongly - that MI6 would follow the beacon signal and retrieve him. They hadn’t. That had been left to Yassen, twelve hours later, by which time Alex’s condition...had not been good. 

“I would have thought that experience would have been enough to put you off,” he said steadily, and it occurred to him that he might have been referring to more than the risk of severe exposure. 

Alex didn’t answer that. He looked, instead, back out onto the lake. Yassen caught a flash of a scar on his neck - pale pink, puckered. A burn scar, Yassen surmised. 

The silence stretched. 

“I have nightmares,” Alex said, eventually. 

Yassen could have concluded that from the state of Alex’s bedding. But he couldn’t empathise. He had not dreamed since he was nineteen years old. Sometimes he forgot that other people did.

“That isn’t unusual, in your line of work,” he said. 

“No.” Alex sighed heavily. His next words seemed to be dragged from him somewhat unwillingly, but it was as if he had given up fighting them. “They aren’t usually bad. When I’m working, it’s like - my mind’s occupied enough to keep them away. Here…”

Having watched Alex drive them both to distraction over the last week, Yassen could fill in the blanks. He surveyed Alex. He looked utterly defeated. Eight days, it had taken, to wear Alex Rider down. It didn’t bode well.

“What do you do when you aren’t working?”

Alex’s mouth twisted with something wry. “I stay busy. Seeing friends. Hanging out in London But - ” He paused. “There’s not that much downtime, honestly.”

In other words, Alex hadn’t stopped in nearly a decade. 

Yassen felt a brief spark of anger towards MI6 - one he hadn’t felt in years. He remembered, with regret, the plan he’d had, and abandoned, long ago, to recruit Alex to Scorpia. It had taken over a year for him to realise that, even without discussing it with either party, neither Alex nor the Scorpia board would ever agree. Now he wondered if he shouldn’t have pushed harder on both sides. Scorpia would not have treated their own asset like this; the risk of early retirement - or mistakes - was too high. MI6, evidently, did not care about such things.

“I don’t think I can stay here,” Alex said, interrupting Yassen’s thoughts.

The admission should not have come as a surprise. Yassen knew full well that Alex wasn’t entirely happy, here in the middle of rural Russia. And yet something still jarred him unexpectedly under his ribs, leaving his breath momentarily hitched in his throat. He’d already reached the conclusion that Alex was here because he wanted to survive. He had allowed himself to become too comfortable with the notion that that meant that Alex wouldn’t walk away anytime soon.

“It’s too - much,” Alex continued. “Too quiet. Too isolated. Some days I think I’m going mad.”

Yassen frowned. “There is plenty to do.”

Alex choked out something that might have been a laugh. 

Perhaps, Yassen thought, it was to be expected of a generation that had grown up on computer games.

“It’s not just that,” Alex said, and he looked torn between helplessness and exasperation. “It’s _lonely_. I’m not like you, OK? I can’t pass days in silence.”

Yassen felt a bite of impatience. “You’re a spy.”

“I’m not anymore, am I?” Alex asked, and there was some heat to that. Yassen thought he understood, at least some. It was the combination of the isolation and the lack of occupation that was making it so difficult. MI6’s fault.

The question was what Yassen did about it, if anything.

The easiest thing would be to agree. To say that if it was too much, he would drive Alex to Arkhangelsk and Alex could stay there or travel onwards somewhere else if he wanted to. Yassen would move to some other rural location in order to keep his head down, and he would never see Alex Rider again.

That option made a great deal of sense. How long had this arrangement been likely to last in any event? Alex had already struggled with the conflict between his own morals and Yassen back in Vyborg. Things were quiet here, but when they left at the beginning of December, how long would it be before Alex had to make a definitive choice between the two? Yassen was under no illusions as to which way that choice would go. Easier to have a clean break now, before Yassen became any more used to having Alex around.

On the other hand, it had been a mere week since they had slipped through the clutches of MI6 and Scorpia. There would be eyes all over Russia for them. Perhaps the police would even be on the lookout, after Alex had damaged Vyborg station. Setting foot in a city now was _not_ a good idea. And if Alex ran into danger - 

Well, Yassen had already seen the sorts of choices Alex made in that scenario. It didn’t speak volumes for his chances of survival.

He paused further, considering. As he had already observed that morning, killing time wasn’t something that came uneasily to him. If Alex wanted to get his restlessness under control, Yassen could teach him how to do it. He’d forbidden himself from interfering, but Alex now seemed to be all but asking him to do so. That - or this was just a courtesy conversation, and Alex had already made up his mind to walk.

“One more week,” he said. 

Alex blinked. “Until what?”

“One more week,” Yassen repeated. “Then you can make a decision about whether to stay or go.”

It was directional in the extreme. But it didn’t hurt to fall back on a dynamic that had served them well enough in the past in order to veil the offer he knew Alex would understand. It was also a test - of whether Alex would let Yassen help on his terms, or not.

There were several long seconds. 

“All right,” Alex said, and sounded so tired that Yassen knew it was time to get back to the cabin, to raise Alex’s body temperature. “One week. Just tell me what to do. I think I’ll take anything, at this stage.”


	5. October III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the lovely jhade on her birthday - I hope it lives up to expectations!
> 
> Thank you as always to Valak for all the encouragement and suggestions. Without her I would still be wallowing in the misery of previous chapters.

**9 October, 7am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

Alex might well have wondered what he’d let himself in for. Yassen didn’t intend to make him wait long to find out. 

First he had to ensure Alex hadn’t given himself severe hypothermia. 

He looked even worse in the light of the cabin, Yassen noted: his skin almost waxy in appearance, his lips tinged blue-purple rather than rosy pink. He stopped within a few steps of the door; for a second Yassen thought he was about to pass out. But the light tremors in his shoulders suddenly gave way to violent shivers, his body reacting with force to the warmth of the cabin. 

A good sign, even if the shock of it seemed to freeze Alex to the spot.

Letting out a small _tsk_ , Yassen wrapped a hand around Alex’s bicep and steered him towards the sofa in front of the fireplace. Alex fell jerkily onto it. He was still shaking badly, but seemed alert enough. 

“Stay,” Yassen commanded. 

He moved around the coffee table and took a box of matches from the mantlepiece. The fire hadn’t completely died down from the previous night, and it took him only a minute to get it going. Once satisfied it had sufficiently caught again, he set the fireguard back in place with practised efficiency, and departed to boil the kettle.

“Thanks,” Alex muttered, when the mug of tea was set down in front of him. If he noticed that it wasn’t the black coffee he normally favoured, he didn’t comment. He seemed, sensibly, more focused on his immediate predicament: his low body temperature. He had pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his fingers; he was hugging his upper body.

“You should have come back sooner,” Yassen said.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I think I got that, thanks.” No doubt he intended it to be rather more biting than his shivers allowed. 

Yassen pressed his lips together, considering. Then, in one easy motion, he shrugged his large dark coat off his shoulders and held it out.

For a second, Alex stared at it.

“I haven’t poisoned it,” Yassen said patiently.

Alex’s stare turned incredulous, moving from the coat to Yassen. He looked on the verge of saying something - perhaps to ask if Yassen had ever killed anyone by lining a coat with poison - but seemed to think better of it. He unwrapped one arm from around himself, fingers appearing beneath his sleeve, and took the jacket from Yassen’s outstretched hand, draping the puffy material over his arms and front like a blanket. 

The warmth from Yassen’s body heat seemed to affect him at once; he shivered once more before he sank lower into the depths of the coat, his knees drawing up onto the sofa underneath it; his eyelids fluttering closed as he let out a sigh. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Something unfamiliar stirred in Yassen’s chest. It occurred to him that if he had been another man he might have sat next to Alex, pulled him close to get warm quicker. But the last time Yassen had really embraced anyone, he had been fourteen. It seemed a bit late to start again now. 

Even if - and maybe especially because - it was Alex. 

_Dangerous_ , a voice whispered in his ear. _Very dangerous. You should have cut him loose in Cologne._

Yassen turned abruptly and left the room.

He waited fifteen minutes to return, by which time Alex was looking distinctly better, his eyes open, a faint flush in his cheeks from the fire, his fingers wrapped around the mug Yassen had given him, no doubt trying to warm the feeling back into them. He’d stopped shivering. Yassen’s coat still lay over his legs. He looked around as Yassen halted next to him once more.

“It took a lot longer to recover last time,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”

“You can blame your employers for that,” Yassen returned. “I believe they were the ones who ignored the beacon signal.” _For a whole night,_ he didn’t add.

Alex shook his head - whether in disagreement or disbelief, it was hard to tell. Yassen ignored him, instead holding out what he had brought from his room: a book.

Alex’s eyebrows lifted. Transferring the mug to one hand, he took the text from Yassen’s hand. His expression was wary, as if he was wondering why Yassen would think he would be any more enthused by this book than the Russian novel he had struggled through for the last week, before his eyes dropped to the cover. He blinked.

“I don’t speak…” He trailed off, evidently unable to identify the language of the title.

“Thai,” Yassen supplied. 

“Right,” said Alex humorlessly. “That’s nice. But I don’t speak Thai.”

“You will.” Yassen’s voice carried the sort of certainty that didn’t invite argument.

Alex gave him a flat look, but, balancing the mug on one knee, flicked through the paperback. It was a learning text - the English laid out on the opposite page from the Thai. The Thai text no doubt looked utterly foreign to him - it was like none of the languages he already spoke. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to learn a new alphabet - last time he’d allowed Yassen a measure of control over his day-to-day activities, Yassen had made sure he’d learned both Russian and Arabic.

“Well,” he said, the merest hint of irony entering his tone as he looked up, “maybe this’ll mean I can retire to a Thai beach rather than the depths of Siberia.”

“We’re not in Siberia,” Yassen felt compelled to point out, but he was unable to stop his lips from twitching.

“Might as well be,” Alex muttered, and settled back against the cushions, the book balanced open in his left hand as he began to read.

* * *

**11 October, 11.30am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

Maybe it was no surprise that Yassen’s first resort was to languages, because Alex quickly learned that Yassen spoke a _lot_ of them. Ten, he told Alex when he asked a few days later. Was there just the smallest hint of pride underneath the admission? Maybe. If there was, Alex was prepared, grudgingly, to admit that it was well deserved, though he didn’t say so. In those first few days after Yassen had found him at the lake, he thought Yassen’s ego had plenty of opportunity for massage without Alex adding to it.

The workouts were the worst. Alex’s preferred cardio had always been running, and he even flattered himself that he was quite good at it - but Yassen had invited him to join him in his daily workouts and, reluctant to turn down the offer of company, Alex had accepted. He instantly regretted it. Yassen might’ve been older than him, but he was insanely fit, and preferred a very different workout to achieve it. The first time, Alex had been absolutely wrecked within forty-five minutes. 

He was quite tempted to throw in the towel there and then, but the amused twist of Yassen’s lips goaded him on through yet another set of burpees.

“I can probably outrun you,” Alex couldn’t help but point out after the third such gruelling workout, as they stood in front of the cabin. Even Yassen looked tired - though, annoyingly, whilst Alex was still breathing hard, his hair damp and plastered to his head, the only sign of Yassen’s exhaustion was the slightest sheen of sweat on his exposed skin: he otherwise looked perfectly composed. He stretched his arm across his body as he considered Alex’s question.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But speed isn’t everything. You can’t always outrun the enemy.”

“Why not?” Alex snarked, pulling up the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe his face, exposing his stomach to the cold air. “I dodged _you_ for years.”

Yassen’s eyebrows lifted as his eyes moved back up to meet Alex’s gaze. There was a brief moment of silence, and then, without saying anything, he bent down, stretching his right leg out to the side in a low cossack squat.

“ _What?”_ Alex asked, unable to stop himself rising to the bait. 

Yassen’s gaze was fixed on a spot on the ground in front of him, as if lost in thought. There was a pause before he responded.

“Well,” he said without looking up, “I think we both know you didn’t.” 

It didn’t take long for the implication to sink in; when it did, indignance shot through Alex like a bolt. “You’re saying you could have caught me if you’d wanted to?”

Yassen shrugged, the movement conveying obvious complacency rather than indifference. Alex stood still for a moment, watching him as he adjusted his position, leaning over to stretch his left leg instead. Yes - once upon a time Alex had been a teenager - hopelessly, utterly outclassed by Yassen Gregorovich, who could have killed him a hundred times over if he’d so chosen. But he’d always considered, by the time that he was twenty or so, they were on more or less even ground. Most of the time, anyway.

Evidently, he and Yassen hadn’t been on the same page.

“And if you had caught me,” Alex said, trying to keep his voice even. “You’re assuming I couldn’t have fought my way out.”

Even from his current angle, standing over Yassen whilst the man bent low to the ground, Alex could see a small smile. He had the uneasy sense that he was playing directly into whatever Yassen wanted, but he couldn’t help himself.

“I could take you in a fight,” he said, a little recklessly.

“You’re welcome to try.” Yassen pushed deeper into the stretch and then stood up, watching him. He looked mildly expectant, as if anticipating Alex might punch him there and then.

Alex regarded him warily, his sense of unease increasing, but still unwilling to back down.

“Tomorrow,” he decided. He wasn’t going to take Yassen on minutes after finishing one of Yassen’s own workouts, where the man already had the advantage.

Another shrug. “As you like.” Unbothered. Confident.

“I _do_ like,” Alex said, because he felt like he ought to have the last word; but his trepidation had already doubled. He forced it away. He was a senior field agent. Had fought countless opponents. In the refresher training he got sporadically fed, he was praised for being quick on his feet. He ought to be able to take Yassen. 

Right?

* * *

**12 October, 10.45am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

“You telegraph too much,” Yassen said, as Alex lay flat on his back on the ground the following morning. “You rely on speed to hide it, but it’s a bad habit. And it only gets you so far.”

It confirmed all of Yassen’s suspicions. He hadn’t engaged with Alex directly in years, but he had seen him a few times, fighting one or another of the security personnel Yassen was supposed to be working with. His style of fighting precisely fitted his profile: overworked, reckless, a history of getting the job done by the skin of his teeth. It was all wrong: Alex was in his prime, and Yassen nineteen years his senior. Alex - in theory - had every right to expect that the fight would be his. But Yassen hadn’t remained one of Scorpia’s most favoured operatives for nothing. And he had been trained by the very best.

Alex pushed himself up onto his elbows. He still looked slightly shocked. As well he might - it had taken less than two minutes for Yassen to knock him to the ground. He lifted a hand to rub his chest where Yassen had hit him.

“You should get better at dodging too,” Yassen added. “That hit should not have made direct contact. You could have avoided it.”

Alex dropped his hand, his expression slightly incredulous. “Are you done?”

Yassen was unfazed. “That depends. Are you ready to fight properly?”

“Are you ready to stop behaving like a dick?” Alex muttered under his breath. Perhaps Yassen should have been offended by that, but instead he found himself amused. Alex had always had a rather colourful mouth on him. Especially when he knew he was outclassed.

He held out a hand. Alex eyed it, perhaps contemplating a refusal - but then he let out a sigh, taking it and allowing Yassen to haul him to his feet. His hand was surprisingly soft and warm in Yassen’s, his palm lacking the calluses Yassen’s had built up after years of handling weapons. 

“Y’know,” he grumbled, as he let go, “I’m not completely useless. I have _been_ in the field, y’know.”

It was difficult not to smile. “Successfully?”

He got a frown in response. Sometimes Alex didn’t smile as much as Yassen expected - or was it just the last eleven days, he wondered. Yassen wasn’t prone to making comparisons between John Rider and his son, but their natural good humour was something they had in common. Somehow, since they’d arrived, an edge had settled around Alex without Yassen noticing.

“Well,” Alex said, distracting Yassen from this train of thought, “I’m retired now, aren’t I? So it doesn’t matter.”

It was Yassen’s turn to frown. “Of course it matters. Being on the run carries all the same dangers as working.” He cocked his head, unable to help adding ruefully: “Except no one pays you.”

“So, what?” Alex asked, annoyance seeping into his voice again. “I’m mediocre. It’s a miracle I’m still alive and it’s a good job I’ve got you around to save me. Is that what you want to hear?”

Yassen paused, regarding Alex curiously. It was obvious from Alex’s tone that, whatever he said, he considered himself perfectly capable of taking care of himself. So why the offence?

Yassen fumbled for an explanation, and came up with only one.

Alex still cared about his opinion. 

He felt a warm frisson of surprise and pleasure before he could check it. 

“No one has ever described you as mediocre, Alex,” he said. He paused, and then added dryly: “A little sensitive to criticism, perhaps.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. Yassen didn’t doubt he’d caught both the compliment and the challenge in his words. But for a moment he found himself uncertain as to how Alex might react - if it was enough to smooth the edge Alex had developed; or maybe that Yassen had caused.

The answer came in the form of a wry curl of Alex’s lip.

“OK,” he said, and there was a hint of exasperation in his voice that made Yassen smile again. “C’mon. Show me what I’m doing that so idiotic, then.”

* * *

“I think it’s because I spent so long just trying to survive,” Alex said later, as they sat eating lunch. He had put on another hooded sweatshirt that covered up the marks two hours of unarmed combat had left on his arms, but his knuckles were battered and there was a red mark darkening on his jaw. It didn’t seem to bother him. If anything, his mood seemed rather more lifted than it had been. “Y’know, MI6 didn’t recruit me properly until I was eighteen. And they gave me a bit of training but by then I sort of had my own way of doing things. Speed was one of the things I had on my side.”

Yassen didn’t outwardly react to this information, even though it was the first time - except for that early morning where Yassen had found him out by the lake - Alex had spoken about his work with MI6. Or about himself at all. They had exchanged words more frequently over the last few days, but it had been largely confined to practical matters, like food, or workouts, or the Thai language. Partly, Yassen suspected, because Alex thought he preferred it that way. 

He wondered if that had contributed to the edge, too.

“I tried to arrange martial arts training for you,” he replied. “Your school said you had to undertake mandatory physical education classes.”

Alex gave him a humorless look. “You already gave me private tutors for most of my classes. I think if you’d taken me away from my friends altogether, even MI6 might’ve noticed.” His gaze dropped to his plate as he picked at his food. “John Crawley had a habit of turning up in the middle of PE to whisk me off to headquarters,” he muttered.

Yassen watched him, wondering if he had mistaken the hint of resentment in Alex’s tone. “I never understood why you stayed with them,” he said carefully. 

He didn’t think, at first, Alex intended to answer him. Alex played with his fork, twirling it back and forth between his fingers. But eventually he spoke. “It seemed like the right thing to do. His voice was quiet. “I couldn’t really see myself doing anything else.” 

That wasn’t surprising, but nor was it a complete answer.

“You didn’t have to work for MI6,” Yassen pressed. “There were other organisations who would have been only too happy to have you. Who hadn’t used you.”

“I’ve worked for them all,” Alex said dryly. “Trust me, they’re all as bad as one another.”

Yassen didn’t doubt that. That hadn’t been what he’d meant. “I meant someone else. Not a national intelligence agency.”

“Someone like Scorpia?” Alex let out a noise that sounded like something between a choke and a laugh. “I said I wanted to do the _right_ thing, Yassen.”

There was no harshness in his tone; if anything, he sounded amused. Out here, very far from the rest of the world, Yassen supposed it was easy to forget the differences between them. Even to him, Vyborg felt a long way away. Sitting here, they could have been two ordinary people, without any of the horrors or deaths both their pasts were so saturated by.

“I don’t think I ever thanked you properly,” Alex said after another moment. His gaze had settled on Yassen, at once both warm and arresting. “For everything you did. The tutors. Sorting out the stuff with Brooklands. Hiding the records from MI6.” 

“Oh. Yes.” Yassen’s response was a meaningless one, born of surprise at the unexpected expression of gratitude. Alex didn’t seem perturbed.

“What I never really understood was why you did it,” he said. Another pause, as if waiting for Yassen to illuminate him. When he didn’t, he put down his fork; his gaze seemed to linger on it before he said: “I think I assumed it was because of my father.”

It was Yassen’s turn to pause. He had never been called upon to explain his decision to help Alex. Truth be told, it had been nothing to do with Hunter: having refused to shoot Alex on orders, not once but twice - first with Herod Sayle and then with Damian Cray - Yassen had thought he’d done more than enough to repay Hunter’s debt. No - after that, he had helped Alex for Alex. And also, admittedly, because he had hoped he might be able to turn Alex over to Scorpia. 

He wasn’t sure he ought to admit to the first one out loud. He was fairly sure the second would go down like a lead balloon, as the English liked to say.

“No,” he said simply. 

He was fairly certain from the way Alex’s lips twitched that he had guessed the first part of the truth anyway.

Yassen ought to have shut the thought down; ought to have, if necessary, told Alex about his rather less selfless motivations. If necessary, have explained flat out, before Alex could get carried away with any thought in particular, that there were things Yassen was capable of giving, and things he wasn’t. But something in Alex’s expression - perhaps it was the quirk of his mouth, which Yassen had missed of late, or the crinkle of his brown eyes - made it difficult to summon the commitment to do so. 

“ _Thank you_ ,” Alex said, with feeling. 

Yassen had returned his smile before he could think better of it.

* * *

**15 October, 2.30pm, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

Six days after Yassen had found him outside in the early morning, Alex let himself be talked into something he’d sworn he wouldn’t do: get into the lake.

He wasn’t too sure how it had happened. He had gone running that morning, and, somewhat to his surprise, Yassen had opted to come. They had done sprint intervals, and Alex had been mollified to discover that he’d been right: he _was_ faster than Yassen. Yassen had been gracious enough not to comment on Alex’s gloating (he normally tried not to be a bad winner, but after the humiliations of that week he thought he deserved to take pleasure in being good at _something_ ), but Alex had half-expected him to suggest a two-hour combat training session in the afternoon by way of recompense. So when he suggested a swim instead, Alex had blurted out relieved acceptance before he’d even thought about it.

It didn’t take long for him to develop second thoughts.

“How cold is it?” he asked warily as they walked along the water’s edge, bundled in their thickest coats and carrying a towel each.

Yassen smiled a little. “Not so cold. It’s only October.” He paused. “When I was a child, the whole village used to get into the river on Sundays, even in the dead of winter.”

Alex had never heard Yassen talk about his childhood before - or, frankly, volunteer any personal information at all except in response to a direct question, and even then it was fifty-fifty as to whether Yassen would actually answer.

“You grew up in Estrov, right?” Alex asked carefully, not wanting to upset whatever fragile mood Yassen was in that had made him offer this information. He got a sharp look anyway.

“How do you know that?” 

“Someone told me. My godfather.” Alex didn’t know if Yassen knew who that was; if not, Alex didn’t much feel like going into it now.

But Yassen didn’t ask further. He was silent for a few seconds as if lost in thought - or perhaps considering whether to go on. “Yes - Estrov was where I grew up,” he said eventually. “Very rural. It had its own forest and a river that ran through it.”

“Have you ever been back?”

Yassen shook his head. “There was an accident,” he said after another pause. “A biological one. The whole place is still an exclusion zone.”

“A factory blew up.” Alex thought he remembered Ash telling him that too.

“No.” If Yassen was bothered talking about it, it didn’t show. “An accident at the factory, yes, but not an explosion. It was experimenting with anthrax. It got released into the air.”

Ash had got that wrong, then. But something about Yassen’s story didn’t add up. Alex knew about anthrax - had once had to investigate a facility producing it, which had very nearly come close to utter disaster - and he knew what the devastating impact of releasing anthrax spores could be.

“Hang on,” he said, “how didn’t you end up dead?” he asked. He’d been given a vaccine against anthrax before stepping foot in the facility - provided by the US military. He couldn’t see a young Russian teenager having access to that sort of thing.

Yassen didn’t answer him. He had stopped at the lake edge. Alex realised with a start that it was the same place he had come to sit nearly a week ago, when Yassen had come to find him. He had chosen it because the flat rock on the water’s edge had given him somewhere to sit and look out over the lake; but he could see at once why it was Yassen’s chosen spot - it was a small outcrop of the lake, mostly hidden from view from the rest of it. Alex hadn’t seen a single person since they’d arrived - but even in a lake as big as this one was, there was always the chance that someone from the village might see them swimming from across the waters. Not here, though.

Yassen didn’t waste time, peeling off his clothes with the same efficiency he approached everything and leaving them folded on the flat rock. He was wearing tight fitting black swimmer’s shorts that stood out starkly against the white skin of his lean, muscular torso. Like Alex, his skin was marred by scars - rather fewer in number, but the decade-old scar across his chest larger, more prominent; a starburst of faded pink where a bullet had pierced the right hand side of his chest. 

If he noticed Alex watching, he gave no sign of it: he seemed completely un-self-conscious. He stepped into the water, and after a few quick strides had thrown himself into it properly. He dipped his head below the surface, wetting his hair and threading his fingers back through it, before turning around to look at Alex. Face pale, silver-blond hair glistening with droplets of water, he looked like some sort of ethereal creature of the lake.

Alex still stood at the shore, fully dressed. He could feel the cool air on his cheeks. The prospect of taking any of his clothes off seemed remarkably unappealing.

“You know,” Yassen said, “if I had known that all it took was cold water to stop you, I would have adjusted some of my security on certain operations.”

Alex shot him a half-hearted glare. He’d dealt with enough, he thought, in keeping up with Yassen’s ever more sophisticated security setups as he’d aged. More than once he’d wondered whether it was really for the client’s benefit or his.

He got a measuring stare in return. Recognising the signs of Yassen refusing to back down, Alex resignedly began yanking off his t-shirt and hoodie. He dropped them and his jeans in a messy pile on the rock next to Yassen’s. The air somehow felt several degrees colder when it was wrapping its way around his bare shoulders and chest, and he shivered involuntarily, goose pimples rising up on his skin. He raised his gaze from the lapping shore to Yassen, half-expecting an expression of mirth or ridicule. 

He didn’t get one. Yassen was watching him with something else unreadable.

It wasn’t the time to dwell on it. But it did prompt Alex to move towards the water, stepping hesitantly into the shallows. The water covered his feet and he had to bite back an outburst of swear words. He took another step forwards, the water rising to his shins.

“It’s bloody freezing.” He didn’t quite manage to suppress the whine in his voice.

Yassen smiled. “It’s good for you. Take it slowly.”

Sure he wouldn’t live it down if he didn’t at least get his shoulders under, Alex forced himself forwards. The water lapped his knees, and then his thighs, and then his waist. It was excruciatingly cold - bordering on painful; enough to set his teeth on edge. He’d already lost the feeling in his feet. The water rose to his chest; knowing that if he didn’t do it now he’d talk himself out of it, he steeled himself, and then plunged himself down into the water. 

The shock was instantaneous - a thousand knives stabbing him simultaneously. Nothing could have prepared him for it. His breath came out in a gasp; every single one of his muscles cramped at once; for a second he was sure he was about to die.

Then a strong arm wrapped itself around his waist. Alex’s blurred vision cleared; he found Yassen’s face inches from his.

“One minute,” Yassen said. “Then you should get out. It will get easier, if you do it every day. You become desensitised.”

Alex wanted to say he was never voluntarily exposing himself to water this freezing ever again. But the cold must have made his jaw seize up too, because he suddenly found it difficult to say anything, and so he had to content himself struggling to tread water, Yassen’s arm still around his middle, so close Alex could see the individual droplets of water running in tiny rivers from Yassen’s short hair down his neck and over his bare shoulders.

* * *

“They were investigating a cure - an antidote, whatever one calls it at the factory,” Yassen told him later, when they were back in the cabin, bundled in warm, dry clothes, and he had made them each a hot drink. It took Alex a moment to realise that he was back to talking about Estrov. “My parents escaped from the factory to give me a dose. It saved my life.” 

“And they took the antidote too?” Ash had told him that they had died - but he seemed to have got a lot of his facts wrong. 

But Yassen shook his head. His face had gone strangely blank. “They told me to run. Shortly afterwards the government began firing on the village.” 

So they had died. Alex felt a pang for fourteen year-old Yassen - everything torn away from him in an instant.

“Only my best friend and I escaped,” Yassen said. He frowned. “Leo.”

It was strange to think of Yassen having a best friend. Alex thought he was probably the person Yassen trusted most in the world - which was to say, not a lot - and he wasn’t sure Yassen would have described them as friends, exactly. “What happened to him?”

“He died,” Yassen said. “Less than twenty-four hours later. From exposure to the anthrax.” 

He met Alex’s gaze, cool and unblinking, and Alex thought he understood, for the first time, how Yassen had become so adept at suppressing his emotions.

He had lost everything in the space of a day - his family, his friends, his village. Alex might pity himself in some of his worse moments, but he’d never had it as bad as all that. He’d never known his parents, and even when his uncle - who had been a strange sort of presence while alive, neither affectionate enough to be familial nor so distant as to be entirely removed - had died, Alex had still had Jack; Tom; his _home_.

“What happened after that?” he asked. “Where did you go?”

There was a pause of several seconds. “Another time, perhaps,” Yassen said. He set his mug down on the table. “We should talk about what you want to do.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, disorientated by the change in topic.

“You said you would stay for one more week,” Yassen said with an unusual air of patience. “Tomorrow morning the week is over. So what do you want to do?”

Alex blinked. Truthfully, he’d barely thought about their agreement in days. Somehow, the week had slipped by in a blur, the days running together in a haze of workouts and combat training, of learning Thai and time spent in Yassen’s company. It wasn’t as though Alex had been fully occupied every moment of every day - and yet the boredom of the first week seemed to have quietly retreated. The nightmares were still there - but less frequent. They had been there since he was fourteen; probably, they would never fully leave him. Upping sticks and leaving for the city wouldn’t change that. 

And yet. What was he _doing_ here?

His gaze moved to Yassen, who was watching him. His expression was impassive; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“Think about it,” he said, rising from his seat in one graceful movement. “You don’t have to decide now.” 

If the prospect of Alex leaving upset him in any way, he didn’t let on. A week ago, Alex might have taken that personally. Now he wondered if Yassen had been on his own for so long that he had simply come to accept it as an inevitability.

“Do you want to be alone?” Alex’s question was blunter than he intended.

Yassen had already been moving in the direction of the bathroom, but he stopped where he was. Turned slowly on the spot. His expression was, once again, impenetrable; his blue eyes as calm and still as the lake’s surface.

“I’ve been alone for a very long time,” he said.

“That wasn’t my question.”

Yassen dropped his head. It was several long seconds before he raised it again. 

“I don’t think anyone ever wants to be alone,” he said quietly. His voice was devoid of bitterness - devoid of anything, really. “But when you have been doing it for a long time, it can be difficult to break the habit.”

It was hard to describe the disquiet Alex felt at this pronouncement. It was the same unsettled feeling he had had back in the car in Vyborg, when Yassen had offered him the opportunity to walk away the first time. The sense that that was what Yassen expected of him. Something awful and painful twisted in his stomach; his throat was suddenly dry. 

“I want to stay,” he said. 

Something in Yassen’s face flickered, the mask slipping, just for a moment. “Alex…” It came out as a tired sigh, as if Alex hadn’t quite understood what he was trying to say.

“It’s all right, Yassen.” Alex surprised himself with how calm he sounded. “I know. I get it.”

Yassen gazed back at him, unblinking. 

_Do you?_ he seemed to ask silently.

“I’ll stay,” Alex repeated. 

A very long moment of silence. Then, softly: “If that’s what you want.”

For several seconds they looked at one another. The fire crackled.

Then Yassen turned around and headed for the bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ever-wonderful [Ireliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireliss/pseuds/Ireliss) did the _most_ beautiful fanart for this chapter, which can be found [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/779705716184449054/813700338657394719/the_lake.png?width=472&height=630).
> 
> Would really recommend checking out her [Tumblr](https://irelise.tumblr.com/tagged/screibbles) too. She is so very talented.


	6. November I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to Valaks for insightful comments, reading, and generally putting up with all my shenanigans. You are so appreciated and I don't deserve you. 
> 
> Also thanks to Lan's tennis coach (and to Olya too!) for comments on the Italian.

**4 November, 10.45am, Central European Standard Time**

**Venice, Italy**

The apartment had been rented; the second floor of an inconspicuous building with a peeling green door about five minutes’ walk from St Mark’s Square. Richard Bevan had never been there, but he knew Venice’s network of narrow streets and canals well by now, and found it without any trouble. He glanced around once to check the street was empty before he rang the buzzer and then stood waiting for an answer, trying not to shiver. His recent return from Abu Dhabi had coincided with an unseasonably cold turn in Europe and he was already missing the Middle Eastern sun.

The intercom crackled. 

“ _S_ _ì_ _?_ ” said a man’s voice. Said in Italian, but with the hint of a foreign accent to someone with a discerning ear.

“ _Sono qui per discutere dell'appartamento_ ,” Richard said. _I’m here about the apartment._

“ _S_ _ì_ _._ ” There was a click as the door unlocked; Richard opened it and slipped inside, pulling it closed behind him before he took the stairs: this block, like many in Venice, was old and narrow and lacked a lift. At the top floor flat he knocked four times on the door - an irregular sequence that might have sounded odd to anyone listening.

It was opened by a man perhaps around Richard’s age, in his early thirties, with dark hair. The owner of the voice over the intercom, most likely; he gave Richard a brief smile and moved to one side without speaking. Richard stepped inside. The apartment was simply decorated, the way rented holiday accommodation in Venice often was: wooden beams in the ceiling, a slightly uneven floor; plain painted furniture.

The other man closed the door.

“Hello,” he said. He had a Liverpudlian accent. “We’ve not met before.”

“Richard Bevan.” His own accent was Welsh, now they were inside.

“Ben Daniels,” said the other man. “Thanks for coming. You can go through - they’re waiting for you.”

There was a doorway immediately ahead, framed by a set of gold-yellow curtains. Richard walked through and found himself in a sitting room. There were two other people there, both of whom he recognised at once. One of them - a short woman with a brunette bob and large glasses - was sitting on a sofa the same shade as the curtains, chewing her nails. She jumped up as soon as she saw him. 

“Richard!” She looked a lot like she wanted to hug him. Richard was glad she didn’t.

“Georgina,” he returned. “Good to see you.” 

It wasn’t, really. He liked his case handler well enough, but this was the first time in over three years that a face-to-face meeting had been arranged like this. It couldn’t mean anything good. There had been a tight knot of worry in his gut ever since he had found the message at the agreed dead drop site on Tuesday.

“I haven’t got long,” he said. “Things are pretty dicey at Malagosto at the moment. Everyone’s on edge.”

“Do they suspect you?” It was the other person in the room who had spoken - the man standing near one of the windows, wearing a pinstriped suit. John Crawley. Richard knew him well. He also knew that the personal attention of Special Operations’ second in command wasn’t a good sign.

“I don’t think so. It’s after Gregorovich’s disappearance, from what I can gather.” He paused, not missing the way the atmosphere in the room seemed to bristle with something unspoken. He continued anyway. “They’ve just got dead paranoid. The new recruits got hauled to one side yesterday and had it explained in fairly graphic detail what would happen to them if they betrayed Scorpia.”

“They don’t get told that anyway?” Ben Daniels had followed him into the room. Richard turned to look at him.

“It’s usually taken as a given.”

Daniels’ expression was rueful, as if he should have expected that. Richard turned back to Crawley and Georgina.

“What’s this about then?” And then, trying not to sound too concerned: “I would’ve thought you’d be tied up with that incident in Germany. Aren’t MI6 being blamed for not passing on intelligence?”

“This is more important,” said Crawley. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, it was only now that Richard realised that Crawley seemed to have aged rather a lot since the last time he’d seen him.

The worry in his stomach morphed into full-blown trepidation.

“You’d better sit down for this, Richard,” his handler said. 

Richard hesitated. Looked between Georgina and Crawley. Then, slowly, he walked over to the dining table and pulled out one of the wooden chairs. It creaked when he sat on it.

John Crawley opened his mouth and began to explain.

* * *

Half an hour later, a tense silence filled the apartment. It seemed to echo in the wake of Crawley’s steady voice.

Richard sat still for a moment more. Then he got up and walked to one of the long windows. Long and grubby net curtains hung over it but it didn’t stop him looking out. Directly below was one of Venice’s one hundred and fifty canals. He knew the city so well by now that he could mentally trace the exact waterway route back to Malagosto from here. It was an odd thought that he might be about to leave it for good. His head spun with the weight of what he’d been told.

“Just let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” he said, and turned back to the others in the room.

Crawley didn’t look particularly surprised that he wanted to go over it again - probably even he realised how incredible it all sounded. Richard took a deep breath. 

“Alex Rider - the _same_ Alex Rider who’s been using my intelligence for the last three years to strike blows against Scorpia - has disappeared with Yassen Gregorovich. At first it looked like it came out of the blue. Now you’ve done some digging and it looks like Gregorovich might’ve been shaping him for - what, _years_?”

“Gregorovich paid for tutors whilst Rider was at school,” Crawley corrected. “We don’t know that it went any further than that.”

“Right.” Richard wasn’t going to ask - again - how MI6 hadn’t clocked the incongruity of their teenage spy ( _a teenage spy -_ that bit was insane enough) missing a hell of a lot of school and still ending up with top GCSE and A level grades. “But in the field they seem to have had some sort of - gentleman’s agreement - ” It sounded ridiculous even saying it. “ - not to kill each other. Then Gregorovich got his orders to murder Rider, and you’re telling me that it’s not just Gregorovich has scarpered but that he and Rider ran off into the sunset together.”

Crawley coughed. Ben Daniels - perched on the edge of the sofa - shifted his weight. He had the same discomforted expression he’d had on his face when Crawley had been describing Rider’s association with Gregorovich at school. Something about all this had deeply troubled him. Richard didn’t waste time dwelling on it.

“And now the concern is that Rider’s going to rat me out to Gregorovich,” he summarised instead. “So the question is whether you pull me out of Scorpia or not.”

Another silence followed - broken, after a long minute, by his handler.

“It’s your choice, Richard.” She had been chewing her thumbnail throughout the time Crawley had been speaking, but she took it away from her mouth now, dropping her arm to her side instead. “We’re all agreed. You’ve got all the facts. It’s up to you what you want us to do. If you want us to pull you out, we’ll put you out. If you want to stay…” 

She trailed off. Her own preference was clearly written on her face. Safety first - that was Georgina all over. It was part of the reason she was such a good handler. 

He glanced at Crawley, who wore a politely interested expression. Richard wasn’t fooled. Despite Crawley’s shabby, tired appearance, he was a fiercely competent intelligence operative. The usual rule was that the calmer he looked, the more there was at stake.

“So what if Rider does let slip?” Richard asked. “Gregorovich has royally pissed Scorpia off, and must know it. He’s not going to be crawling back in a hurry unless he wants a bullet through his head.” Or worse, if the rumours at Malagosto were anything to go by.

“He might use the information to barter for Scorpia to leave him alone,” said Georgina. “Like you said - they want him dead. It might be what he needs to negotiate a nice, quiet retirement.”

Excellent. Nothing Richard liked more than the idea of being used as brokerage material for a terrorist who fancied a quiet life.

“What about Rider?” he asked wearily. 

“What about him?” Georgina asked, folding her arms. It was evident that Alex Rider was not in her good books.

“Well, Gregorovich can only tell Scorpia about me if Rider tells him first. So - is he going to or not?”

Georgina and Crawley both looked in the direction of Ben Daniels. Richard had wondered why he was there - it had been the agreement from the start that the pool of those “in the know” about MI6’s mole in Scorpia would be kept as small as possible. He could guess now why it had been expanded.

“Have you worked with Rider a lot?” he asked Daniels.

Daniels’ mouth tightened. “More than others.”

“And?”

Daniels looked wary. As he might - he knew what was riding on this. Richard wouldn’t have wanted to be giving advice in this situation, either. Unfortunately, he was the one who needed the advice. 

“Who knows what’s going through his head?” Daniels said at last. “The Alex I knew was a good person. I don’t think he’d sell you out on purpose. But if Gregorovich has been working on him since he was a teenager…” His jaw seemed, if possible, to tense further. “He was always a lonely kid,” he said, his voice suddenly hard. “Bet Gregorovich knew exactly how to turn on the charm.”

Richard got the gist. Although privately he wondered if Daniels wasn’t misconstruing things. By the sounds of it, the agreement, arrangement, _whatever_ , had gone both ways.

“OK,” he said, his voice heavy. “So we don’t know whether Rider will sell me out or not - or if he already has - and we don’t know what Gregorovich will do with the information even if he does.” It wasn’t a very appealing state of affairs. 

He turned to look out of the window again. He knew he only had to say the word, and he’d be extracted immediately. Likely he’d be on a plane back to Britain that evening, before Scorpia could even register his disappearance. He’d be given a new identity within twenty-four hours; perhaps a new life somewhere else abroad, or perhaps another operation far away from Scorpia, if such a thing were possible.

Fear told him to choose that option. But if Richard had been the sort to be motivated by fear, he’d never have agreed to an operation which required him to sit in the middle of the scorpion's nest for the last three years.

“Aren’t I your main source of intelligence for Scorpia?” He directed the question at Crawley, who was still standing nearby. 

“Yes.”

“Well, then,” said Richard, “seems to me like Britain’ll have a pretty big hole in its intelligence if I jump ship, then.” And not a hole that could be covered again with any great speed, given that it had taken over a year just to plan the operation in the first place - never mind Richard maneuvering himself into a position where he was privy to worthwhile intelligence. All the same, he weighed his next words before he spoke again. “I’ve got to carry on, haven’t I?”

Despite the off-hand tone of his words, he felt slightly sick to his stomach; he couldn’t have articulated the dread that had taken up residence somewhere above his navel. The risk of betrayal was precisely the reason why there were few people at MI6 who even knew about the operation at all. It was true that there were extraction procedures in place if needed - that he could activate if he felt in danger - but in reality he probably wouldn’t get an opportunity to activate them. If Scorpia found out he was an MI6 agent - well. It didn’t have a history of taking betrayal well; put it that way. 

And what was he relying on? Rider not to sell him out to a man who seemed to have had some sort of hold over him for years, and Gregorovich not to sell him out to Scorpia when it was probably the best chance he had of saving his own skin?

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want us to pull you out, Richard?” Georgina pressed.

Richard looked at Crawley. The man had the sort of look on his face that suggested that he’d already known what decision Richard would come to, and it occurred to Richard that maybe he’d only been presented with the illusion of choice in the first place. He swallowed, his throat dry.

“Yeah. In it for the long haul,” he said, trying to ignore the way the churn in his stomach had increased. “But, look,” he added, forcing a smile in an attempt to lighten the mood and not dwell on the sleepless nights coming his way, “if you catch up with Rider, give him a punch from me, would you?”

There was a beat of silence. It was Daniels who broke it.

“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “Turns out, if a senior field agent disappears with a terrorist, it causes even more problems than you’d think. I think there’re going to be a lot of people in the queue for that one if we ever lay our hands on Alex again.”

* * *

**5 November, 1.10am, Moscow Standard Time**

**Tel’dozero, 88 miles east of Arkhangelsk, North West Russia**

The first Sunday in November marked five weeks since Yassen and Alex had arrived at the cabin in Tel’dozero. There was nothing particularly notable about that and the milestone no doubt would have passed by unnoticed - the second half of October had slipped by imperceptibly, in a blur of days somehow different and yet indistinct - were it not for the turn in the weather that had coincided with the start of the new month.

Yassen managed to ignore the white snowflakes fluttering past the window in the early hours of Sunday morning for a whole hour before he found his gaze at last drawn from his game of chess. A layer of snow had already built up against the bottom of the window pane. It was cold for November; the temperatures during the day now slouched only just above zero, and at night, they sunk even lower. The snow shouldn’t have started in earnest for another fortnight at least, but every morning for the last few days, he had woken to find smatterings of white on the ground. The lake had already started to freeze. 

A few flurries were not much to worry about. But the consistency of them, Yassen had to acknowledge reluctantly, was troubling. The last thing they needed was to get caught in the middle of a week-long blizzard and then not be able to leave. 

The sound of a door opening interrupted his thoughts. Instinctively, he looked around to see Alex standing in the doorway of his bedroom, dressed in long pyjama bottoms and a white t-shirt he was still pulling down. Yassen caught a flash of toned stomach before it disappeared. Alex must have sensed his glance, but he didn’t meet his eye - instead padding lightly, barefoot, across the room to the kitchenette. Yassen watched him for a second, before turning away again, back to the chess board - deciding to ignore the weather again for the time being.

He heard the sound of the tap and then footsteps. He expected to hear the click of Alex’s bedroom door closing again but a second later Alex halted next to the coffee table. He was carrying a glass of water.

“Where did this come from?” He gestured at the chessboard.

“One of the cupboards.” Yassen had found it earlier and set it up. It had been a while since he had played, but it had come back to him easily enough. He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed it - the analysis, the tactics, testing strategy to work out the cleverest and most logical way through.

“Who’s winning?” 

“I always win,” Yassen said flatly.

A ghost of something like humour played around Alex’s mouth. “Can I join you?”

He set the glass down on the table and lowered himself down onto his knees, settling opposite as if Yassen had already agreed; or, rather, as if he knew that Yassen would. 

_“Do you play?”_ Yassen asked in Thai. They had been speaking it more in the last few days in a bid for Alex to practise - something to do as they were increasingly driven inside by the weather, though the dark shadows under Alex’s eyes rather suggested it wasn’t working. Alex grimaced and shook his head. _Too tired._

Yassen repeated the question in English.

“Not for years,” Alex admitted in response. Then, offhand: “Ian taught me.” 

Yassen’s gaze dipped back to the board. Ian Rider did not get mentioned very often. It had never quite been clear if that was because it was a sensitive topic between them or the opposite; that Alex simply didn’t have much to say about the uncle who had trained him for a life with MI6. Yassen wasn’t about to delve into the topic now.

“Do you want to start over?” he asked.

Alex shook his head, seemingly unbothered by Yassen’s lack of acknowledgement of his previous answer. “Your alter ego’s probably done a better job than I would anyway. Whose turn is it?”

“Yours.”

Alex sighed and sat up higher on his knees to inspect the board. Yassen studied him from under lowered lashes, wondering what had made Alex decide to stay up rather than go back to bed as he usually did. He might have wanted to flatter himself that Alex simply wanted to play chess with him, but Alex’s mouth had settled into a flat, unhappy line that suggested otherwise. Yassen’s gaze lingered over it. It had been an education, in many respects, forced into a confined space with another person for several weeks. Or, perhaps more specifically, with Alex. Conversation - talking about things Yassen might not have instinctively volunteered - tended to flow rather more freely than he might have expected, for reasons he didn’t fully understand. But there were certain things that seemed - by unspoken agreement - to be off-limits.

“Are you all right?” he found himself asking anyway. Quietly.

Alex stilled as his fingers hovered between the bishop and the rook. Either would be a mistake anyway, Yassen thought. It protected Alex’s pawns, but for what purpose? They wouldn’t win him the game.

A few seconds passed before Alex opted for the bishop.

“I’m OK,” he said. “Just - y’know.”

Not the most eloquent of descriptions, but Yassen understood it anyway. He considered again, and then: “Do you want to talk about it?”

The pause was lengthier this time.

“It’s just old missions,” Alex said at last. “Nothing exciting.” 

Yassen didn’t press further. Instead, he went back to considering the chessboard. After a moment, he picked up his knight and took Alex’s bishop. Alex raised an eyebrow but leaned forward again to study the board. The shift of position moved him into the glow of fire, so that it threw a golden light onto his face, highlighting the line of his jaw and cheekbones.

On occasion, Yassen thought, Alex was almost painfully attractive. 

Fortunately, he was also remarkably oblivious at times. Instead of looking up to meet Yassen’s gaze, he glanced sideways, out of the window.

“Do you think we’ll be able to stay as long as the start of December?” he asked.

Yassen blinked, caught, for a moment, off-kilter - though he shouldn’t have been, given that he had just been wondering the same thing himself. He pulled his gaze from Alex and looked to where his head was turned. The flurry outside seemed to have got thicker.

“We’ll have to see,” he said. Then, with reluctance: “It’s colder than I had anticipated.”

Alex made a hum of agreement. Dropped his gaze back to the chess set. He moved his knight this time, taking Yassen’s own and setting it down on the table beside the board. 

Yassen’s turn again. He considered the options. Alex had chosen an interesting strategy, he decided, managing to maneuver himself into a position where Yassen would be hard pressed to take any of his pieces, somehow without bringing himself any closer to winning. 

“We haven’t really talked about where we’re going next,” Alex said, interrupting his analysis.

_Where we’re going next._

Yassen didn’t move his gaze from the board, but he felt his spine stiffen. 

He should have been prepared for this conversation. He wasn’t. Four weeks ago, he had reasoned it was better - safer - for them to stay in the cabin together. But he had known even then that their arrangement had a limited lifespan. Nothing had changed about that. As soon as they moved anywhere with people, the danger increased multifold - and so, consequently, did the risk that there would be another Vyborg. The risk that they would come to blows about the right approach to dealing with threats. 

Four weeks ago, Yassen had assumed that when they moved from the cabin, it would necessarily be the end of it; that they would part ways before circumstances compelled Alex to bolt; before Yassen had grown any more used to Alex’s presence; before it became too difficult to separate.

Somehow, the decision seemed less clear cut now.

“What do you want to do?” he asked eventually, sidestepping the question.

Alex shrugged. “I think I figured we’d have to go to a town or a city, if we were going to stay in Russia, given the weather. Unless you want to go somewhere warmer.” His mouth quirked again - this time hopefully.

That persistent “we” again. Whatever Yassen’s doubts - despite the fact it had repeatedly been _Alex_ who had considered walking away - Alex clearly assumed that they were sticking together.

Something warm flared in Yassen’s chest before it died again. So there was a certain amount of attachment on both sides. That wasn’t surprising, given the last month or so - hours, days on end spent in one another’s company. But an attachment formed in a bubble isolated from the real world wasn’t helpful to either of them. It had to end sooner or later.

Yassen had just thought it would be later rather than sooner. Hadn’t banked on the weather working against them.

“Yassen?” Alex prompted.

Yassen’s gaze had drifted to the window again without his noticing. He moved it back to Alex’s face; decided that was dangerous, and dropped it to the board instead. 

It was still his turn. On a fresh look, he could see the way through. Sacrifice the queen, and he would win the game. The only way Alex could avoid Yassen winning would be to stop guarding his pieces so religiously; accept that sacrifices had to be made if one wanted to win.

Still he didn’t move.

_We should separate._ Three very simple words. They shouldn’t be difficult.

Almost hesitantly, he glanced up again. Alex was watching him, his eyes partially obscured by his fringe. He brushed it out of the way with an almost irritated flick of his hand. His hair had grown a lot since they’d arrived at the cabin; so gradually Yassen had hardly noticed, but five weeks had been enough for Alex’s normally short-ish hair to start curling around his ears and neck as if he were some surfer in California. It didn’t quite suit him, somehow.

“I could cut it for you, you know,” Yassen said. Somehow it slipped out before he had really considered it.

Alex frowned. Perhaps unhappy at the sudden change in topic. “If you like,” he said after a moment.

Yassen paused, and then stood up. Alex blinked.

“What, now?” he asked incredulously. “It’s one in the morning.”

Yassen shrugged. One tended not to be bothered about the time when sleep was only ever four hours long. “You don’t seem to mind losing at chess at one in the morning.”

Alex gave him a flat look - the one he reserved for when Yassen mocked him. But perhaps even he realised that the game wasn’t going particularly well, because a second later he was shrugging too.

“OK,” he said. “If you really want.” 

Yassen didn’t pause to dwell on that comment.

The cabin didn’t have a very large bathroom. No bath - only a standing shower cubicle, a toilet and a sink with a mirror over it. Just enough space to set up a stool next to the basin. Alex, still looking slightly bemused, sat down while Yassen fetched the scissors and a towel. Alex took the latter when it was offered and, after a second’s hesitation, hung it around his shoulders.

“Can you actually cut hair?” he asked dubiously, eying the scissors in Yassen’s hand.

Yassen bit back a noise of impatience. “Yes, I can cut hair.”

“Do I want to know how?”

“No.” Likely, it would put Alex off ever going to a barber again. 

“Right, then.” Alex didn’t look like he felt entirely reassured, but he turned around so that he was facing the wall, his back to Yassen. 

Yassen stepped forward. It was, perhaps, a good thing that the mirror was too high for Alex to be able to watch him whilst he was sitting down, because he found himself suddenly, unusually, second guessing himself. Unarmed combat practice - which they did most days - was one thing. This - which he had a suspicion he’d suggested merely as a way to avoid their prior conversation - suddenly felt rather more intimate than he had anticipated. 

Hesitantly, he reached out his left hand. Took a single curl at the nape of Alex’s neck between his thumb and forefinger. Unexpectedly soft; neither too thick nor fine. Longer than his own, which was barely enough to catch between his fingers.

Alex had gone very still. Not tense. Simply unmoving. Yassen wondered if he was even breathing. He tested the curl, tugging it a little, his knuckles brushing the back of Alex’s neck. The skin was warm. 

This had been a _very_ bad idea, he realised. But now he’d started, it was rather difficult to stop. There was no appropriate excuse to give that didn’t make it ten times worse. 

Also because, he realised with the strange feeling in his chest he sometimes got of late, he didn’t want to.

He reached out to the basin; set down the scissors for a moment; and twisted the tap on. He wet his fingers under the running water, and then, before he could think better of it, ran them through Alex’s hair. 

Alex shivered. Possibly because the water was cool. Perhaps instead because of the odd sensation of Yassen’s fingertips grazing his skull and then lightly twisting the hair in its roots, dampening it through. For his part Yassen wasn’t in the habit of running his fingers through others’ hair, but Alex’s…

Yassen halted the thought before it could develop. Instead, he forced his movements to be efficient, wetting his hand a few more times and raking it through until Alex’s hair was sufficiently damp before he switched off the tap and took up the scissors again. Took the original curl he’d first fixated on and pulled it straight. Lined the scissors up. 

They grazed Alex’s neck and he flinched.

“Easy,” Yassen murmured, his left hand dropping the curl and coming to rest on Alex’s shoulder instead. He felt it relax under his touch. 

“Sorry.” Alex’s voice was hoarse with something imperceptible.

Yassen didn’t respond. He took the piece of hair again and slowly - so as not to startle this time - cut it. It fell in a single wet strand into Alex’s lap. Alex picked it up. The strands feathered softly in his fingers. Yassen was already onto the next curl, but he didn’t seem to notice. 

The next half an hour passed in silence, broken only by the soft snip of the blades and the occasional running of the tap. Yassen’s movements were careful, methodical; practised though in fact it had been several years since he had exercised this particular skill. When he was satisfied, he lay the scissors down on the side of the basin again. Then, almost without thinking, reached to brush away some stray hair from the back of Alex’s neck. 

Alex shivered again - but it was different this time. Something in the atmosphere seemed to shift. Yassen was suddenly reminded, vividly, of a moment which sometimes felt like a lifetime ago: running a single finger down Alex’s neck; Alex shivering under his touch as he waited for Yassen to undress him. 

Perhaps Alex was not so immune to him as Yassen had thought. 

The thought caused him a momentary thrill of surprise - and pleasure. Before he could check himself, he was seized of an almost overwhelming temptation to test it. To drag Alex up from his seat - to push him up against the wall, the way he’d done in London, and press himself against him; feel Alex’s body under his. To see if Alex would push him away, or - as Yassen now wondered might be more likely - surrender, moaning and quivering and letting Yassen take him as he liked.

“Have you finished?” 

Alex’s voice came out as little more than an exhale. It was still enough to snap Yassen back to reality. He drew in a breath, and then forced himself to take a step backwards.

“Finished,” he confirmed. Voice just about even.

A pause - perhaps as though Alex was waiting for something else. But then he reached up a hand, running it through experimentally. “Can I look?”

“Of course.” 

Alex pushed himself off the stool and stood to look in the mirror. Yassen watched as he examined it, fingering pieces of it and tipping his head this way and that.

“You haven’t taken much off,” he said, tone critical. 

Yassen raised his eyebrows and then dropped his gaze pointedly to the floor. It was covered with wet strands of hair. 

“Still longer than I’d usually have it. Especially on top.” Alex ran a hand across it again. It was true it was longer than Yassen had seen him wear it before Russia: short enough not to make him look like someone who belonged on a beach; just about long enough to curl at the ends.

“I can cut more, if you’d like,” he said after a moment, somewhat unwillingly.

Alex hesitated. Caught Yassen’s eye in the mirror. 

“Do _you_ like it?” he asked.

Yassen paused. Then decided there was no real point in denying it; he had cut it that way, after all.

“Yes, I like it.”

“All right.” He turned away from the mirror; leaned back against the sink. The distance felt even closer this way around. Face to face, Yassen could better appreciate his handiwork. Though he wasn’t sure what, exactly, had possessed him to make Alex Rider even more good looking.

“You don’t want me to make it shorter?”

Alex shook his head. His gaze was on Yassen’s. It was difficult to know what he was thinking. Yassen kept his face deliberately impassive. It was several seconds before Alex spoke again.

“Now we’ve got that out of the way,” he said, “can we get back to the point?”

Yassen frowned. “What point?”

“What the plan is. Before we get snowed into this place, preferably.” Alex’s voice was tinged with irony.

Oh. That. Yassen’s mood dipped, mulish with resentment.

_We should separate. Just say it._

He didn’t want to. 

How had he got himself into this mess? he wondered. The fact that sex with Alex a single time had lowered his inhibitations enough to ask him to come with him in the first place should have been a massive red flag to keep his distance. But, in his defence, he had tried. It just didn’t seem to have been enough. 

“Which is better?” Alex pressed. “Going to a city? Or getting out of the country?”

He had to give Alex an answer. He forced himself to concentrate. In the long term it would be better for Alex, at least, to get out of the country, probably: Russia was big, but the whole world was larger. Except - 

“It will be dangerous for you to leave the country without obtaining a different passport,” he said. He should have thought about it before; but, truthfully, he had managed to avoid contemplating anything beyond the cabin for days.

Alex frowned. “I’ve already got three. The ones you left for me in Cologne.”

Yassen shook his head. “You entered the country on a Russian passport. You will need one to leave, or a foreign passport with the right visa documentation.”

“So I can use the Russian one.”

“Better to use a different one. And it would be as well for you to have several others before you leave the country, so that you can burn them if need be.” Yassen tilted his head, considering. “I have contacts in some of the cities that deal in false documents.” 

They couldn’t go to Vladivostok - because that was where he’d laid the breadcrumbs he expected MI6 and Scorpia to follow. Moscow - where he had a small apartment - was too obvious a choice. Samara was the other option, down in southern Russia. A possibility. How long would it take to obtain new passports and documents? A week or two, perhaps, if he didn’t ask for a rushed order.

Another week or two. Assuming they left that week - and it would be sensible, given that the world’s attention was already turned in another direction - towards a bombing that had taken place in Berlin on Friday - that would take them not very far short of the two months Yassen had imagined they would have. A consolation prize, of sorts. Before he finally severed the ties as he should have done weeks ago.

“Samara,” he said. “We’ll go in a few days.” He paused, and then - not quite trusting himself to say anything else - turned to leave the claustrophobic atmosphere of the bathroom. 

“Yassen.”

He was in the doorway when Alex spoke. Reluctantly, he turned. Alex hadn’t moved; strong arms flexed as he braced himself against the sink.

“Russia’s a big place,” he said. “It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

With that strange ability he sometimes had for sensing the train of Yassen’s thoughts, he had guessed that something wasn’t quite right. On this occasion, he hadn’t quite landed on the mark. Yassen ought to correct him.

“It will be fine,” he agreed instead, and left the room.

* * *

**6 November, 4.30pm, Greenwich Mean Time**

**London, England**

The Locarno Suite of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on King Charles Street consisted of three very ornate rooms. The Reception Room was the most impressive: a very long room with a high vaulted ceiling painted in blue, two marble fireplaces at either end, and gilded gold moulding lining the walls. The suite had earned its name for being the location of the signing of the Locarno Treaties in December 1925 and this room remained the largest and most ornate of the rooms in the Foreign Office building. Used only for important occasions. State visits. Treaties. And - occasionally - sorting out particularly difficult diplomatic incidents.

“Bevan seemed like the decent sort,” said Ben Daniels as he and Crawley stood in the room in question, near a rectangular antique table that had been brought in. There were no chairs; they had all been removed lest anyone feel tempted to linger by sitting down.

“It takes a specific person to cope with deep undercover work,” said Crawley wearily. “Bevan always had the right psychological profile.”

Ben didn’t ask what sort of psychological profile SO had decided Alex Rider had. He felt like he had heard the pouring over of every single aspect of Alex’s personality in the last five weeks. Had debated every possible outcome _ad nauseum_. Listened as a decision was made in relation to each and every operation or piece of sensitive information Alex happened to have been privy to. Some less important operations had been pulled. Some contacts relocated. Mostly, after much agonising, things had been left alone. Not because they could trust an agent that had thrown his lot in with Yassen Gregorovich, but simply because, like the operation involving Bevan, they were so sensitive and fundamental that they were deemed worth the risk.

Now it was just a waiting game. 

Up to a point.

“We’re really doing this, are we?” Ben muttered. 

Crawley shot him a wary look and didn’t respond. Not overly enamoured with the idea, either, Ben deduced; but options were limited when the Foreign Secretary had been breathing down your neck for the last five weeks.

They didn’t have time to discuss it further. The double doors to the room suddenly opened and three people strode through it. One of them - the one in front - was a man MI6 widely suspected as being in charge of the _rezidentura_ in Harrington House, both the Russian ambassador’s residence and the London headquarters of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation - or the FSB as it was more commonly known. The man’s name was Yura Sergeev. He was tall and in his forties with a pale, expressionless face and a smooth, black comb over. The other two - a younger man and a woman - were strangers. Likely part of the FSB too, if they were here. After the meeting was over a file note would be carefully written up on each of them and put away for the next diplomatic crisis. Expulsion of intelligence officers was always a possible negotiating tactic. 

The three of them halted on the other side of the table.

“Well?” It was, unsurprisingly, Sergeev who had spoken. His accent was so strong it felt almost put on. His face was twisted into a cold sneer. Ben disliked him on the spot. “Are you ready to talk?”

Crawley blinked, as if politely curious by this display of aggression. But he dug into the inside pocket of his pinstriped blazer and came up with a photograph, perhaps four inches by six in size, and placed it on the table between them. 

The Russian spy took out two of his own photographs. Placed them on the table next to the one Crawley had put down. One of them was a fuzzy image, captured on closed-circuit television from a distance. The other was a colour photocopy of a passport page in Russian. Crawley’s photograph was somewhere between the two: a close-up but slightly blurry image - possibly taken with a hidden camera. 

“His name is Alex Rider,” Crawley said. “He was born in London. He is twenty-four years-old.”

The Russian’s eyes narrowed, gaze moving between Crawley and Ben like he suspected some sort of trick. 

“One of yours?” he asked.

Crawley didn’t miss a beat. “No. We’ve had him under surveillance for a while.”

A lie that fitted with what they had told the Russians when the row over what had happened in Vyborg had first erupted to explain MI6’s presence in Russian territory. 

“Very well.” The Russian nodded to a young woman to his left, who hastily stepped forward to gather up the photographs, including the one Crawley had handed over. They didn’t really need it, but it was often the case that the more photographs the better when they would no doubt be run through databases, checking and cross-checking that the information Crawley had given them was correct. Perhaps they would make the connection with the fourteen year-old that had been picked up in Murmansk a decade ago; perhaps they wouldn’t. “And his associate?” Sergeev asked.

Crawley reached in his pocket again and drew out another photograph. This one was even blurrier than the first one, but unlike the photo of Alex, MI6 hadn’t had to hunt for a poor quality image. In fact, this was the best one they had.

“Yassen Gregorovich,” he said, placing it down on the table as he had with the first photograph. “Until recently, he worked for Scorpia as one of their top operatives. You may have heard of him.”

A blank face greeted these words; it was difficult to guess whether the FSB had had Gregorovich on their radar or not.

“He’s Russian,” Crawley put in helpfully.

Sergeev’s mouth thinned. He glanced at the woman, who shook her head. Sergeev turned back.

“This does not match the description we have,” he said. “It was an elderly man. You have the photograph.”

“Our analysts spent forty-eight hours comparing the images,” Crawley said. “It’s him, I assure you.”

A curl of the lip this time. Perhaps Sergeev didn’t think much of MI6’s analysts. But he picked the photograph up and handed it to the young woman anyway.

“Your agents will be put on a flight tomorrow morning,” he said. “I hope it won’t be a surprise to you that they will not be welcome in Russia again. Vyborg or elsewhere. I would suggest that in the future you don’t conduct operations on Russian territory without prior notice.”

Crawley didn’t react to that. It went without saying that he would not be running any operations past the Russians. “And you’ll tell us if you find Alex Rider?”

A stony expression met his question. “I believe that was the agreement.”

It was impossible to say whether it was an agreement the Russians intended to keep. A very good reason for not telling them that Alex Rider was a spy for MI6, Crawley had told Ben.

“Excellent,” Crawley said. “In that case, pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen. And lady. Good evening.”

He smiled placidly. Looking disgusted, the Russian spy turned around and left. His companions scurried behind him.

“I know you don’t like it,” Crawley said, when the double doors had closed behind the three of them. “But it’s this or facing a Disciplinary Session in the Commons led by the Foreign Secretary.”

Ben didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he’d much relish the idea of having to explain to the Joint Intelligence Committee how MI6’s use of a teenage spy had so spectacularly backfired either. Nor should they feel any particular guilt about handing over Alex’s identity to the Russians - even if they didn’t yet have any evidence that Alex had told Gregorovich a thing, he had still run off with a known enemy. Ben shouldn’t feel any compunctions at the thought of Alex being arrested by the FSB.

The trouble was that Ben had known Alex Rider for a long time. And he was finding it difficult to shake a stirring unease that they had just sold Alex out completely unnecessarily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. The cabin interlude that was supposed to be one chapter turned into three. Oops. Not sorry if that's what it took to get Yassen wanting to shove Alex up against a wall. Who knows if this will stick to twenty chapters. Future BurntWhisper's problem.


End file.
